Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2

Spoiler Alert!
Seriously don't read if you haven't seen the movie or don't want to know what happens, etc.

I used to be quite fanatical when it came to Harry Potter.  Like obsessive.  My brothers will attest to it (and they don't even know all of it).

I've since calmed down.  Become more normal.  Grown up.  I can now go whole weeks without thinking about HP or connecting something in daily life to HP.  I've diversified my interests.

But I still deeply love Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling.  The only thing that may surpass my love for HP someday is giving birth to my own children.  You may think I'm exaggerating and being melodramatic, but I'm really not.

So it was really, really hard for me to not go to the last midnight premiere.  And it didn't help hearing people talk about it in class all day Thursday.  But I waited until Saturday when my mom and brother came to visit.  Me and my brother, who I will refer to as Pacman, have been through many midnight releases together.  We have lots of fond memories of eating jelly beans and talking to costumed people.  My mom went to midnight parties to get the books for us when either we were too young to stay up so late or when I had to work the next day.  They've both been through this HP craze with me, and I'm really glad we waited to see it together.

They brought costumes, and we dressed up...  No one else was dressed up when we went to the theater... Because the movie had no been out for 2 days and all the crazies had already gone.  But we looked cool.

I'm glad I waited to see the movie with them.  It was more meaningful and I loved experiencing it together.  We had so much fun dissecting the movie afterward and talking about our favorite parts.

My favorite part of the whole movie was any scene with Maggie Smith/McGonagall.  I didn't expect to love her parts so much, but she really stole the movie for me.

The Gringotts scenes were EXCELLENT.  So impressed with that part of the movie.  The preparation of the castle for battle was awesome as well.

The parts that were a bit of a let down for me were:

• Molly Weasley's BIG line
• Neville's killing of the snake
• the battle post-Harry's death

Why these parts weren't so great:

There was no lead up to Mrs. Weasley's line.  I didn't even know Bellatrix and Ginny were battling.  They barely even show Ginny's face.  Without that build-up of Ginny being targeted by Bellatrix, the line didn't pack quite the same punch.  Though Mrs. Weasley is still AWESOME.

I thought Neville killed the snake in front of EVERYONE.  Harry was faking dead, and Neville was standing up to Voldemort.  Harry disappears under the invisibility cloak, Neville kills the snake with the sword of Gryffindor, Voldemort freaks out, but invisible Harry starts shooting out protective spells to protect everyone from Voldemort's fury.  The movie didn't do it that way.  Harry was visible and distracted Voldemort.  Neville didn't have a big crowd when he killed the snake.  I really wanted Neville to have his five minutes of fame in the movie.  And I really liked the idea of an invisible Harry protecting everyone in the book.  So that whole last bit of battle (after Harry died) was too cut up and different from how I pictured it.

But man did I bawl like a baby when Harry was going to surrender himself to Voldemort and die!  The movie was definitely emotional for me.

So now, I'm going to try to lose my memory of the Harry Potter books, so that maybe in 5 years, I can read them again and experience them almost like it was the first time....

Though Pottermore is coming out this fall...  Maybe I won't be able to forget them...