<p>I was surprisingly and somewhat embarrassingly moved at the end of this movie – a series my children grew up with, first in print then on screen. </p>
<p>We did the stay-up-til-midnight bookstore parties when each volume came out. My daughter would then vanish, reading it straight through in a day and a half. My son was in second grade when the first movie came out. </p>
<p>Now my daughter has graduated from college, my son starts college in a couple of weeks. Harry Potter is over, as is a whole era in my children’s respective lives. I admit it, I had a dopey smile on my face and tears in my eyes at the sight of “grown up” Harry, Hermione and Ron sending their kids off too. </p>
<p>Anyone else feel the same? Or am I just really getting old?</p>
<p>I haven’t seen the last movie yet (and will therefore make myself scarce after this post, lest I stumble across a spoiler), but I’m sure I’m going to feel the same way. I get all sentimental about this kind of thing.</p>
<p>Katliamom, I feel exactly the same way! It’s hard for people who haven’t lived this with their kids to understand. When my D called to tell me Border’s was closing, one of the things she was sad about is that it is the Borders where we went to the book parties at midnight! The series is over and now the store where we celebrated is closing?? A double blow.</p>
<p>D2, who is a junior in high school, said it felt like it was the end of her childhoold. She learned to read her first big book through Harry Potter. H read the first book to her, she wasn’t satisfied with the speed and decided to read it on her own. She said a lot of her friends felt that way about Harry Potter. D1 is 5 years older, she never got into it.</p>
<p>The movie was very good. I have seen it twice.</p>
<p>I don’t think there was any issue with the actors being too old… and this obviously is the last movie, since there are no more books. Big deal for my kids, too, although we had all read the last book, so no plot surprises. I think the last book brought a bigger “end of an era” feeling for them than the movie. Neither could remember a time when we were not anticipating the next HP book. We spent a huge amount of time in their childhood discussing the various plot points and possible outcomes. Mantori.s, you really should go back and read the books. They are better than the movies (although the movies got better over time).</p>
<p>You and gazillion other parents, I’m sure.<br>
I believe we went through the first two or three books well after they were released, but from then on we reserved our copies and went to the midnight parties. Fortunately, at least my youngest didn’t have the reading skills to go through a few early ones by herself, so I had the greatest time getting them together, taking turns to read it aloud. Even the older ones benefitted from understanding some of the word formations and concepts they may have missed, like slavery in the US as compared to the role of elves in HP. I loved the fact that while they enjoyed the movies, they all felt the books were better, and we spent a lot of time taking about it.</p>
<p>JK gave our family many days/weeks of quality time and we were fortunate the timing of the books/movies were optimally matched to the ages of the kids. We also had a huge “end of era” feeling, but it was more towards the publication of the last novel.</p>
<p>I liked the books, but still think there are better series out there. The movies were uneven and I never had that much invested in them, though I was happy that they stuck to the plots and I thought the movies were well cast and it was nice that except for the original Dumbledore everyone made it through all the movies. We saw it with S2, and I see that despite his poopoohing the whole series, he’s now re-re-rereading the first book!</p>
<p>I felt the same way at the end of the film. My husband, my 21 yo kid and I went to the final movie. It felt like I was closing a chapter of our lives.</p>
<p>We all enjoyed Harry Potter. Fond memories of midnights at Border’s (RIP) and my kid urging me to hurry up and read the books so we can discuss them!</p>
<p>katliamom, I was surprised how moving I found it as well. My friend that went with me wept and she rarely cries. It really is the end of an era. </p>
<p>I remember last summer seeing Toy Story III with my son and my sister. My sister sat between us and eventually started crying because we both were crying so hard! Movies can really touch your heart.</p>
<p>I went to see it this weekend. I feel like many of you–it represents the closing of childhood. I found the movie very affecting. Very sad towards the end when Harry is walking through Hogwarts, before he gives himself up to Voldemort, and you see all the dead many of whom were children and others main characters.</p>
<p>Same here … my oldest is 20 so she is the perfect Harry Potter age … we read the first 3-4 books aloud together as bed-time reading … it’s part of the fabric of her childhood for me. My younger two kids were not as drawn to the books and I personally did not like the last 3-4 very much (too dark, too much he-who-shall-not-be-named, and not enough magic) … we did enjoy all the movies and are glad they pretty much stuck to the books.</p>
<p>I found myself somewhat sad or depressed the weekend of the last movie, and then I finally realized I was grieving the end of an era with our two girls. They are so lucky to have grown up with this series. We planned summer vacations around the release of the book and/or movie so that they would be home to partake in the festivities. DH and I are so grateful that they both had this experience as they were growing up.</p>
<p>Count my family among the melancholy. The end of the books was difficult enough. But, we consoled ourselves, we could cling to the “HP anticipation fun” as the last movies were released slowly. Now the movies are done and we have nothing left to look forward to. It a real feeling of loss. My kids also grew up reading HP. We read them aloud, discussed them at dinner, and had great fun predicting the next event in the story. We miss it.</p>
<p>On a related note, I have a friend who refuses to let her son read HP. She says there are way too many “good books” and “classics” available for him to waste his time on pop literature. Now, I don’t think HP qualifies as fine literature. But, it is a shame this child has been denied a chance to relate to other kids his age through the HP culture. I hope when he goes to college in 2 years he sneaks to the library and reads these books just for the fun of it.</p>
<p>I had a mini-Harry Potter marathon this weekend, watching Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire (on ABC), Deathly Hallows I and Deathly Hallows II. (My daughter couldn’t understand why I also didn’t watch 5/6, but that wasn’t an option and I thought (!) I remembered enough of those…) It really is the end of an era although I felt that way more about the books. And am I the only one who totally lost it when Hermione erased her parents’ memories of her? And, Neville is a stud!</p>
<p>I thought the memory-erasing was pretty moving.</p>
<p>My son and his girlfriend and I saw HP7-2 last night. It was good. My only complaints are as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The whole relationship between Snape and Harry’s mother seemed like Rowling pulled out of her, um, shorts.</p></li>
<li><p>There was never a shred of chemistry between Harry and the personality-challenged Ginny Weasley, so how they ended up happily married is beyond me.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Ginny and Harry have lots of chemistry in the last two books. I think knowing that makes the movie version of their relationship easier to accept.</p>
<p>^yeah Ginny wasn’t well cast in the movies. </p>
<p>There are a bunch of things in the last movie that are pretty confusing if you haven’t read the book. The one that really baffled me was when they were at Gringott’s and they ask for Bellatrix’s wand. Since they were in possession of it in the previous scene, it’s completely inexplicable why they don’t fork it over.</p>