I must admit that when I started reading Harry Potter it read like any fantasy book I had read before. Even the owls flying like mad or the cat reading a map didn't make me click.
The first signal was given by the weird man in the long robes stealing the light from the streetlamps – there was something there. Stealing light was a godlike (or demon-like…) action. Only Gods and Demons were capable of doing so.
I was captured.
I remember reading the book in a wink - after all it was just a children’s book - but it had put a definite spell on me.
I know it had all the necessary ingredients to be accepted – the orphan child, the wicked family with whom he lived in servitude, the kind heart despite all the hatred, the enchanting castle and the brotherhood of friends, the enemies and the bullying, the loneliness, the loss, the death, but also the shared happiness, the self discovery and the hint of hope, the final recognition (“…mirror, mirror on the wall…”) and victory over evil. Over death.
These same signals are present in every story we read or were told when we were children – Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty (no, they were not written or invented by Walt Disney!)… - as well as in complex sagas like The Lord of the Rings.
Nothing new? Obviously not.
But it works. It tells about values like friendship or loyalty, or love being a powerful shield against whatever might strike us through life. It tells of hope and dreams, of life and the inevitable death. It tells of grief and pain, of joy and tenderness, of suffering and sacrifice.
Nothing new. Obviously not.
These are the things why Harry Potter must be cherished – because it brought to light those values sometimes forgotten in the mayhem of modern life where virtual friends are at hand and families are estranged…
It tells of things that kept us going along centuries, preserved our life and made us different.
To that awesome difference we called Humanity.
And that was the real magic of Harry Potter.
