The journey that Harry, Ron and Hermione (her-my-nee!) have taken was also taken by millions of other children this past decade. Here's one account of that journey........

 Written by: Breanne Cursley 

I was seven the first time I heard of Harry Potter.  My sister, who was nine at the time, brought it home from the school library for our mum to read to us at bed time.  After our first night of reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone my mum was a little worried that it may be a bit to frightening for someone of my age, but I convinced her to keep reading, and so she did – and it wasn’t long before we were hooked.  And how could we not be?  J.K. Rowling’s words are enchanting, and the world she created took my imagination far from anywhere it had ever been before with a book, and trust me, I was quite a bookworm back then.   

My mum continued to read us the series up to book four, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Then there was a three year wait for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to come out, and it was in those three long years that I managed to read the series from 1-4 six times again.  By then I was almost eleven (and my sister was thirteen) so we decided to read book five by ourselves.  And so we continued like that with The Half Blood Prince and now book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.   

I remember one day, I was playing in my yard when I came across a stick that looked to me like a wand.  I took into my room and pretended I was at Hogwarts, practicing my wand movements – Swish and Flick.    

Another memory I can recall is when I dressed up as Hermoine in the fourth grade for Halloween.  Walking into the classroom in my ‘robes’, that my mum had made for me, I saw another girl dressed up in similar clothing.  I approached her and asked her who she was supposed to be.  She said Hermoine as well, but pronounced it all wrong.  I then, being a little bit cocky after reading the series so many times, corrected her and she got rather mad, saying I was the one in the wrong.  We went on to have a heated argument (well, as heated as it can get when you’re nine years old) and didn’t settle on anything, but I can’t say I wasn’t a little smug when the film came out, and all the characters said it Her-my-nee. 

What I really admire about the Harry Potter series is that, for me, it wasn’t just reading material, but so much more.  Through the books I picked up bigger vocabulary that I may not have learned at a younger age, and because the books kept getting thicker and thicker, I found myself starting to read other books with more pages, which expanded my horizons. 

The sadness to me is that now Harry Potter is at an end.  Many questions buzzed through my head as my sister and I purchased the final instalment.  What will happen now? Will Harry’s legacy live on for generations to come? Will my children read Harry Potter?  

It really is heartbreaking, when you think about it, because this is the very end.  No more midnight book parties, eager anticipation at the next book to come, or even fourth-grade arguments.  But I think all that we, as the generation who experienced all this, have left now are the memories, and – of course – the books.