Still wild about Harry

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jul 17, 2007 | by Jackie BurrellSTAFF

WHEN THE CLOCK strikes midnight Friday, Heather Knight will be at a Borders bookstore in Santa Cruz, clutching the copy of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" she's had on order for months.

Knight was an El Cerrito sixth-grader when she cracked the spine on her first J.K. Rowling novel, and since then her infatuation with the series has never wavered.

"Oh God," the University of California, Santa Cruz, junior says, "I am a Harry Potter fanatic."

Knight is just one of millions of young adults who grew up with the young wizard. At the same time Harry was mooning over classmate Cho Chang, kids in Generation Potter were swooning over their own first crushes. They may not have battled dark lords or Dementors, but virtually every Potter fan was familiar with a real-life Malfoy- like bully and had experienced a Snape-caliber humiliation.

So, as the final book hits the bookstore shelves this weekend and J.K. Rowling's famous fictional wizard ends his tenure at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry's teen- and college-age fans say the moment can only be described as bittersweet.

"The end of the series signals the end of his childhood," says UC Berkeley sophomore Molly Green, now a political economies of industrial societies major, "just as the childhood of those who grew up (with) Harry is ending."

With 325 million copies in print, translations in 68 languages -- including Gaelic, Estonian and Urdu -- and a readership that spans the globe and any notions of age, there's no doubt about the series' popularity.

But the wizarding hero holds a particularly special place in the hearts of a certain set of young people. At some point in the series -- which covers seven years of Harry's life but took 10 years to publish -- they were the exact same age as their hero. The publication of each new book unveiled not only fantastical adventures, but an emotional world they were experiencing at the same time.

"Growing up (with) Harry really gave the kids my age a strong connection to him," says Green, who remembers once hoping she, too, would be invited to attend

Hogwarts. "We knew how he felt and that we would react in the same ways he did to many of the situations."

Most kids, especially in their teenage years, feel that they just don't fit in, Green points out. Harry didn't fit in either, and he got to become a wizard.

"I think the series gave hope to a lot of kids that things would turn out OK eventually, and that you didn't have to be one of the 'cool' kids to do great things," she says.

And you didn't have to be Harry's exact age to feel it, says Miramonte High School sophomore Lissa Gilbert.

"The (characters) always were a really big part of my life," says Gilbert. "They're now a few years older than I am, (but) the normal problems they

have -- school and relationships and friends -- I can see in my life."

Rowling's series may have been aimed at children, but it quickly transcended the kid lit genre. Teens, college students and adults have pre-ordered the final novel at local independent bookstores, online at sites such as Amazon.com and at every chain bookstore across the nation.

Last Tuesday at midnight, Potter fans crammed local multiplexes to see the fifth Potter movie, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Campolindo High senior Connor Hansen and his friends decorated T-shirts so they'd be appropriately garbed for the midnight show at Walnut Creek's Century 14.

If there was any lingering doubt about Potter's popularity among the older teen and 20something crowd, one need only glance at Facebook, the college-centric social networking site where membership is soaring among the more than 500 Harry Potter-related Facebook groups.

Some 36,162 belong to the "No, I can't hang out with you on July 21st. HOW DARE YOU ASK?" group, which includes college students from UC Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, Princeton and campuses around the world. Some 42,750 -- up from 39,977 last week -- belong to the "@$% this, I'm transferring to Hogwarts" group -- including UC Berkeley's Green, who helped launch the group.

Its forums are filled with fond reminiscences of first encounters with Harry and explorations of every plot nuance, from Dementors and magical creatures to Hogwarts cuisine.

Given the intense buzz surrounding the release of the fifth movie and seventh and final book in a 10-day span, it's hard to remember a time when Harry Potter wasn't a household word.

The first midnight book release party owner Michael Barnard threw at his Danville store, Rakestraw Books, in 1999 was a very quiet affair. The only people who showed up were a dad and pajama-clad boy who strolled down, using a flashlight to illuminate their path.

By 2000, the Hogwarts juggernaut was rolling. Best friends Bryan Banducci and Brian Mackey were 10 that year. Banducci arrived at the Rakestraw party wearing a Potteresque cape and sporting an inked-on lightning bolt, just like Harry's signature scar -- the one seared into his forehead in babyhood when Lord Voldemort's killing curse rebounded.