And So It Ends

After ten years, Harry Potter finally met his fate. For those who have followed the books all these years, July 21, 2007 felt like the end of an era. The seventh and last book of the series was published, and the millions and millions of fans around the world can found out what happened to Harry Potter and his friends. It's quite astonishing to see the following a book series about adventures of a boy wizard and his friends to defeat an evil wizard can gather. J.K Rowling surely never quite imagine how powerful the impact of her creation when she completed the first draft of Harry Potter and The Philosopher Stone in 1995. Although frankly, not that many did at the time. She sent her script to twelve publishers and they all rejected it, until a small company named Bloomsbury took the gamble and bought the rights and published it in 1997.

Another 5 books and 325 million copies later, it was proved to be the best gamble they ever made. Rowling's story managed to capture the hearts of millions of children, and surprisingly, a massive number of adults too. The humour was sharp and funny, while the twists are good. The plot was interesting enough for grownups while not too complicated for younger people. In short, Harry Potter series is a well written story. The books was on the top of the New York best selling novel for quite some time, until they made a new category for children books so that other books canreached number one.

In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, the wizarding world is at war. Lord Voldemort, the afore mention evil wizard had comeback from the dead and literally taking over. Harry, who was prophesied as the one to kill him, went on his final journey for this purpose, with the help of his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

Those of you who got used to the slow starts at the previous two books, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, and Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, will be pleasantly surprised at the tone of this book. Four chapters into the book we already got a massive on-the-brooms dogfight battle. For the most part, the book was full of high octane actions, and it is great because this story is reaching the climax.

As established in The Half Blood Prince, Voldemort quest for immortality ended up with him splitting his soul into 7 parts. As long as parts of his soul still exist, he cannot be truly dead.

In Deathly Hallows, the story fittingly revolves around the effort of Harry, Ron, and Hermione effort to find Voldemort's soul and destroy them. While at the background, with Voldemort taking over at the Ministry, the wizarding world was beginning to feel its effect on his effort to 'purify' the wizarding race. The pure blood ideology that Voldemort brought in this fictional world was not dissimilar with the real world Hitler's Aryan superiority. The quest also served as the ultimate test to the trio's friendship. It was great that in the few parts of the book about their quest that wasn't action oriented, Rowling managed to convey that feeling of loneliness and weariness that Harry, Ron and Hermione felt. And with this being a war, there bound to be casualties. Some of Rowling's memorable characters hit the dust in this book. It was sad, but also served as a realistic aspect of the book.

I felt that this book served as a fitting end to the much beloved series. It tied up a lot of loose ends although not all of them. Rowling has mentioned that it was done on purpose because her earlier draft was far too convoluted when she included in all the details.

Although I was sad that this book means that there are no more new Harry Potter story. But I'm glad that I, as Rowling mentioned in her introduction of the book, one of who 'stayed till the end'.

So long Harry, it's been a great ride.