It’s almost two years since the coronavirus pandemic started, and that meant lockdowns everywhere. With so much time in our hands a lot of people did millions of different activities, like baking huge cakes and donuts, or yoga and those crazy exercises in the living room or in my case, read all the TBR I had for over a year.
Personally, I think lockdown wasn’t as much of a change in my lifestyle but I was able to do a lot of reading, even more than other years which obviously was great for me, not that great for my wallet!
The crazy thing here was the I discovered that I love specific genres and I ate those books in days, some of them in hours, so the TBR was successfully decreasing and I was out of new readings, so instead of going back to the bookstore, I decided it was time to do a re-reading of the Harry Potter series!
I’m a huge Wizarding World fan. I’m a proud Slytherin, I have a good collection of merchandise, I’m the number one fan of the butterbeer, and the parks in Orlando are one of my happy places in the world. But then, I realized the last time I read the complete series, was almost 11 years ago, so part of doing this re-reading was to notice all those little details I didn’t realize before.
I met Harry Potter back in the year 2001, I was five years old and I saw the movie in the cinema with my cousin and my aunt. I can brag about knowing how to read since that age so I started the first novel two weeks after watching the movie. I remember my mom gave my the book and told me that I had to read at least 30 minutes every single day.
Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal the Spanish edition by Salamandra was only 254 pages, it’s indeed a small book, but back in those days for me was a huge thing, and I can say that was the first big kid book I had.
Now speaking a little bit more about technical aspects, if you know the story you’ll find out that Chris Columbus did a great job with the first movie even thought not every single detail is the exact same as in the book, but you can’t deny both the movies and the books are great independently of is the same thing or not.
The book beings with a description of the Dursley family, as they seem to be the worst kind of humans possible. Annoying, rude and not very tolerant. They hate everything that has to do with magic, and that also includes his nephew, Harry, who was left at their doorstep at one year old when his parents died. They raised him as a stranger, they made him sleep in the cupboard under the stairs, they forced him to wear the old clothes of his son Duddley who also seems to enjoy making Harry feel miserable every day, well… the boy had a terrible childhood, and he seems to be used to being mistreated by his family.
When Harry turns 11 years old, he receives a letter from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in the film we remembered this particular scene with a large number of owls that arrived every day at the Dursley house with hundreds of letters, and the great chaos in the living room, which caused an escape from the house to a house in the middle of the ocean. In the book this event happens almost in the same way, only that after the first letter arrived and said it was for Mr. H Potter, the cupboard under the stairs, the Dursley’s decided to change him to another room in the house, but it wasn’t very helpful since the following letters came with the indication to be for Mr. H Potter, the smallest room, and even when they runaway to a hotel, the letters said Mr. H Potter, Room 17, Railview Hotel.
Also, and I think it is one of the most iconic scenes in the saga, it is when Hagrid appears personally to finally deliver his letter to Harry, informing him the he’s a wizard. Here, Harry learns that his parents did not die in a car crash as his uncles told him, and that they also studied at Hogwarts. In the movie, this scene is particularly short, pretty much because in the book, Hagrid not only gives Harry a birthday cake, but also takes artifacts out of his pocket to cook and tells the story of how his parents died because of Lord Voldemort.
Something that we can find very different between the book and the movie is the physical appearance of the characters, starting with Harry himself. According to the literary description, his eyes should be green and not blue as shown in all the films. There are many descriptions that don’t match literally speaking, like Ron’s nose, or Hermione’s teeth, which are actually an important detail in later books. I feel like the only ones who became one hundred percent attached to the book character in the movies were Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy and mostly Albus Dumbledore.
It seems to me that the development of the philosopher’s stone is very attached, even thought the movie it’s not a 100% replica from the books. The essence of the story remains the same, maybe the only big change was not showing or mentioning Peeves, the poltergeist who used to prank all the students all the time, he was a recurring character throughout the series and was never mentioned in any film.
Something I’m very grateful to this series is the passion and love I found in its pages. Since discovering I was a Slytherin the first time I did the Sorting Hat quiz and felt extremely proud of it, to actually understanding being a Slytherin was something good, that I had the qualities and the personality. The funny thing is that being a Slytherin helped me a lot in my journey of discovering myself. I’m extremely competitive, and ambitious, and I was afraid of that, and then I met amazing people that were like me, sorted in Slytherin and I found out that being ambitious doesn’t make you pretentious or achievement-oriented doesn’t make you selfish. I found out I was a natural leader and everything because of a kids book.
Someone told me once that if you need to describe yourself in three words, I just need to use my house traits, and I did once… was the best idea ever!
Something I personally hate about Harry as a character, is that because of his ignorance about the wizarding world, he believed in everything he was told since the beginning. For example, his hate about Slytherin… we are not bad people, we are just extremely focused on our goals and yes we do everything in out hand to achieve those goals, there’s also bad Gryffindors out there right?
As an extra fact, I have to admit that Harry is not my favorite character of the series, so here’s my top 10 of favorite characters in the wizarding world of Harry Potter:
- Draco Malfoy
- Severus Snape
- Minerva Mcgonagall
- Albus Dumbledore
- Hermione Granger
- Tom Riddle
- Narcisa Malfoy
- Albus Severus Potter
- Scorpius Malfoy
- Lily Evans (Potter)
Thank you, J. K. Rowling, for creating this fantastic world and inspiring millions of kids and adults all around the world with your words, thanks for creating this world that is one of the best things in my life now and make us believe in magic everyday!
4 / 5 ⭐️
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