These days I was reading the last volume of a story series that have accompanied me for nearly a decade. Yesterday when finished and turned over the last page of the tome, I signed with a complex smile, one for my ultimate witness of Harry and his friends’ happy ending and the other for the termination with my further expect for the whole story. From 2002 to 2010, Harry Potter series is the children story that gives me the deepest impression and influence during my study life. Ten years have passed away; however, I still have a vivid memory of my initial connect with this legend initiated by J.K Rowling.
In a breezy and clear night, I entered a restaurant with my father, attending a dinner hold by his colleagues. The moon was round, shrouded with several nebulous clouds in the midair. That day I had a fine mood as the restaurant was situated on a road near my old house, which aroused much of my thoughts back to the happy old days in the lanes.
With exquisite spectacles, my father’s colleague, Mr. Shen, was a lanky young man with a tinge of genteel manner. Though having little word and anecdote shared with his companions in comparison with my father, who was quite gregarious and talkative, he was not restrained but quite penetrating. He bade us welcome. To my surprise, he brought a present for me as the first-meeting gift. It was a book as I spotted it, without any wrappings or decoration. However, I still liked it since reading was one of my hobbies in leisure times.
He told me, with a gentle voice, that he really recommended this book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as it was the most popular in 2001 and remained the bestseller for several weeks in UK years before. Still an innocent boy at that time, I did not have a thorough concept that night when I first reached it. But as reading the story further, I was gradually mesmerized by the wonderful world that Mrs. Rowling had created and the little boy with round-framed glasses.
The protagonist, Harry Potter, was a ten-year-old boy with no difference with others before reaching his eleventh year of his life. However, one day a letter from a strange school brought him a new lease of life at his next birthday, activating the special elements within his innards as a “wizard” and altered his destiny completely. The later experience dawned upon him that he belonged to the magical world, instead of the life in the early years with his Muggle relatives.
Actually, apart from the fantastic articles and creatures in the story, what Harry had come across was quite similar to all the children with the same age, including myself. Ten years ago, I was ensconced in a corner of the class, confronted with various teachers and classmates. Harry was kind, curious to everything, but a bit timid. So was I at that time. He was so lucky, having the opportunity to make friends with Ron and Hermine, both of whom were kind, benevolent and audacious, which, in my opinion, is the exact quality that magnetized them together and this friendship remained even more stable in the rest of their life. Seeing through the quintessence of his growth at Hogwarts, the magical power that wizards can wield is only the surface, embellishing the fanciful world with a feeling unprecedentedly newfangled. Yet all the circumstance, from the churchyard of Hogwarts to the bustling Diagon Alley, from the messy Burrow to the Ministry of Magic of mid-age style, falls precisely together with a shred of Victorian England. Everything seems to be both distant and close to ourselves. The story contains a dream of various meanings. I used to vision that I had the same power as Harry did, that I can fly with a broomstick and apparate from one place to another.
At the magical school which can be regarded as a greenroom that nurtured Harry, he met with the grandfatherly old headmaster Dumbledore, the bulky Hagrid, a scholarly mentor and beneficial friend, and many other professors and friends. These people, whoever good persons or bad ones, played a role as valuable guide in his lifetime. Severus Snape is a great character who should be given all the due respect since he swallowed incredible humiliation and bore a heavy load, securing his deepest love towards Lily to the last minute.
The first five volumes in Chinese and the last two in English, I grew from a middle school student into a university graduate throughout the first decade of 21st-century. Harry has grown older. So have I. When reading the epilogue of the last book, I had a compound emotion because both Harry and I have experienced many vicissitudes of life, being mature from step to step. Additionally, he named his offspring after his forefathers, memorizing their heroic spirit and thrilling legend. I can not help imaging a time many years later, when we retrospect to our struggle in early years. How can we not be nostalgic and sigh with deep emotion?
I think in the future, I will read Harry Potter, which is a common memory in our generation, to my children at bedtime, making the precious spirit embedded permanently in their infantile hearts.