Extreme Blogging

Aug 06, 2008

Posted by: John Admin

Uncategorized

So three blogs in, and I’m already failing to keep up to my weekly blog promise. Though I have a good excuse! Believe me. This past weekend was filled with seeing old school friends and distant relations, while spending as much time as humanly possible with my closer family members. As there isn’t a holiday in sight, it must have been my birthday. And so it was! (How shocking!) And as I became another year older, (and hopefully wiser), I found myself thinking back on the year that was and how there was something missing.

That something was Harry Freaking Potter. Yes, that once good friend of mine failed to make appearance. Not a sight, nor a written word, and I, (along with many others), was left to reflect back on the adventures we’d once shared. From August 4th 2007 to August 4th 2008, no new books or movies came into the public domain and Harry remained elusive.

And yet, I’m currently heading on my way to Chicago, all the way from the UK, to attend a Harry Potter conference, Terminus, which is displaying a striking resemblance to how I spent the days following my birthday last year. To be precise, I’m currently squashed into a small airplane that’s presently thousands of miles above the Atlantic. That’s right ladies and gentlemen: EXTREME BLOGGING!!! Any moment now I could go hurtling to my death, and yet here I sit, typing away on my trusty macbook bringing you my thoughts on Potter. You may think that this surely shows dedication, where in reality it’s more likely because I’m 4 hours into an 8 hour flight, that has already been delayed for an hour, I’m most likely to miss my connecting flight, and my chosen book, (Breaking Dawn), is boring the pants off me. And I don’t think the air stewards would appreciate pants-less flying, so there you go: I type away.

Anyway: back to the matter at hand. Last August, I attended Prophecy, a conference by HPEF held in Toronto. It just so happened that my birthday fell on the Saturday of that magical trip, and I got to experience a birthday with the best people possible. Amazing, fun, hilarious people who I hold dear in my heart. Many of whom I’ll be seeing again in a few hours time, for the first time since I left them last year.

But at Prophecy, there was a strong theme of discussion going around. A book named Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released just a few weeks previously and people came together and shared their thoughts on the final chapter of our hero’s adventure. So now I’m sitting here thinking: what this year? With a conference NOT following on the tail of a book release, and with no future novels to speculate about and theories to discuss to death, what can this conference hold for hundreds of fans that will be in attendance?

Maybe you can guess my conclusion from simply thinking about what I’ve already written. Have you not noticed I haven’t even mentioned the programming that was present at Prophecy? Sure, I said people discussed the book, but that’s just a conversation, not a lecture or a seminar. So maybe that’s what the hundreds of fans have to look forward to: hundreds of fans. Over the years, a community has grown out of these books and it has been, simply, amazing. Some of my best friends, people who I would trust with my life, I have only seen face to face on one occasion, (soon to be two). That’s not because they read the same book series as I did, or that they attended the same conference that I spend a week at. It’s because of their hearts, and how truly phenomenal they are, and will be in their later lives. It’s because they are incredible people that I care about, and that care about me, and Harry Potter is just a mutual friend, not a basis for our friendship. A year on from the last book, I’m still traveling hundreds of miles to see these people and it’s not because I’ve had a sudden revelation on Snape’s TRUE quadruple secret agenda, or that I’ve learnt guitar and I’m returning to prove my Wrock God status. It’s because I can’t wait to laugh with my friends again. It’s because I want new photos to cover my wall at university next year, with all their beautiful smiling faces beaming down at me. It’s because I want to get to know them better, see how they’ve been and just hang out. Oh and party of course.

So even though in the past week we’ve had a glimpse of Harry’s next on-screen adventure, and been promised a new companion book that we can all devour come December, that isn’t what’s pulling me back, and it won’t be pulling me back over the next few years. It’ll be the people, the community and the considerable amount of fun together when we get together.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, even when Harry, one day, leaves the community, we’ll just be one member down, and as history has shown, a community is so much more than one person.

P.S. Guess who DID miss their connecting flag so will be many hours later than expected and is currently editing the HTML for this entry in Detroit airport? You got it! ME!





The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.