It all ends

Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock would know that the eighth and final Harry Potter movie was released last week. The press has covered it exhaustively, from both a "Thank |God it's over" standpoint to a "wow, it's all so brilliant, you simply must see it" perspective. I've always been a fan, first of the books and then of the films. I was out at the cinemas last Tuesday night, watching the Deathly Hallows Part 1 in preparation for the latest movie. I was hardly alone. I think it would be rare to find a full cinema for a movie that's about a year old, without it having become a cult classic. Even more rare would be the look of the audience.

I know there are certain films shown in certain cinemas where people go along to participate and dress up. The Westgarth used to run the Blues Brothers regularly; the Moonlight Cinema showings of Grease end up attracting a huge crowd of fans. Rocky Horror Picture Show, in particular, is known for audiences in costumes not normally seen on the streets. Harry Potter seems to be in the same category. The hard core fans were out and about on Tuesday night, complete with robes (or rather, academic gowns, most often), hats, wigs, brooms and scars. My friends and I all felt very old as we got our money's worth out of the ticket just in watching our fellow audience stream in. We certainly felt a strange combination of under-dressed and old, sitting in our tame street clothes. There again, we weren't going to be backing up our 9pm session of the old movie with the midnight first screening of the new one. Part of what made us feel old was the realisation that, before we became mature adults and had to turn up in a reasonable state for work on a regular basis, we would have been in the midnight show. Sure, we wouldn't have dressed up, but we would have been there.

There's been a whole lot written about how many of the fans have grown up with the characters. They started out the same age as Harry when they read the first book, and have reached adulthood and maturity at the same time as him. Little has been noted about the generation of fans who measure their adult life in comparison of Harry, as well. Close reading of the novels will show that Harry, the character, should be about my age. The headstone on his parents' grave puts their death in 1982, meaning he was born in 1981. He, like me, should fall into the awkward gap between Gen X and Gen Y, forever feeling just slightly out of place with those on either side of the generation gap. We're too young to have children in tow when we go to these films, but too old to feel comfortable walking through Crown Casino dressed up as a death eater. But at the same time, the Harry films, at least, have coincided with some big things in my own life.

The first Harry film came out when I was 21. I was legally an adult everywhere, and taking my first steps into a properly grown up world. It was the year that they kicked us out of university to go and work for a while, to learn just how much we didn't know about being architects. I used at least part of my year to take my first overseas trip without adults - actually, my first since a trip to New Zealand as a three year old. I saw the movie alone, sitting in a late afternoon session on a miserable day in Cork, Ireland. I felt like a complete outsider as I sat there waiting for the lights to go down - although in Ireland, like the UK, they never go down completely the way they do in Australia, so it felt even more strange. Then, for a couple of hours, I was transported to places that had suddenly taken on a new meaning for me, given that I'd just experienced the wonders of Kings Cross Station, of London for the first time. The sense of wonder Harry felt when he arrived at Hogwarts for the first time was nothing compared to the awe I felt as I stood in a London phone booth (this was in the dark ages, before Skype, before everybody travelled with a mobile phone, hell, before my parents had worked out how to email) and told Mum that I'd arrived safely. She still remembers how excited I sounded, even after not having slept for almost 36 hours. I may have been ten years older than the fictional character, but I could relate.

Since then, the world has grown increasingly dark for both the fictional wizards and the real life me. We aren't threatened by an evil dark lord, but the rise of terrorism following September 11, less than a month before I made that first trip, and the current financial woes have cast a shadow over the adulthood of my in-between generation. We emerged from childhood into a world where we were told we could have everything, much like Harry discovering the wizarding world. The first years of the rest of our lives were bright, with sudden explosions of doom, until about four years ago when the first rumblings began. Around the time of Order of the Phoenix, actually.

So here we are, and Harry has saved Hogwarts once and for all. There's no doubting now that I'm all growed up, even if I do still have a liking for kiddie tales. Here's hoping that the lighter side of the final scenes of Deathly Hallows Part 2 will presage brighter times ahead for my age group, a lighter future for the Gen Yers who went to so much trouble with their costumes. One can only hope.