Harry Potter fans mourn end of series

For years, fans have followed the lives of three young wizards, Hermione Granger, Ron Wesley and Harry Potter, watching in awe, as they defeated snakes, magical chess sets and thwarted the plans of “he who shall not be named.”

As the summer and the release date of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” grow closer, so does the end of the phenomenon which took the world by storm in 1997, when Potter was first introduced as a poor orphan boy with extraordinary power.

“Whenever I was younger, I remember everyone was reading that book, so I got hooked into it, too,” Princess Joy Verdan, a kinesiology major, said. “It just flowed so easily—like how well she described everything. I remember sitting down with a book and reading it in two days or one day and waiting for when she’d come out with the next one.”

As the years progressed for both students and wizards, so did Harry’s popularity.

In 1998, Rowling sold the rights to Warner Brothers to begin the making of the Harry Potter films, the first of which was released in 2001.

Once fans had a more visual image of Harry and his friends, the social impact grew exponentially, introducing video games, and even branching into popular board games, such as “Scene It.”

As the fan groups grew, so did their activities. The release of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” began the midnight release parties with loyal fans meeting dressed as characters and often having mock-sorting hat sessions, “wizard games” and other wizard-related entertainment.

“For the opening of the sixth and seventh books, I went to the midnight book premiere at Barnes and Noble with close friends and family,” junior English major Megan Kelly said. “I wore a Gryffindor shirt that I had made, drank pumpkin juice, and saw many Snapes, Dumbledores, and Hermiones of various statures.”

Along with the premieres, hundreds of sites dedicated to the fans of the series appeared on the Internet, one of the most prevalent was Mugglenet.com where fans were able to come together and compare notes on the movies and books.

For some fans, it was a place to write their versions of what they wanted to see in the book.

The impact of the wizarding world brought many people a place to escape by giving them a chance to dress as the characters and even write about them on the many fan sites available. Stories, role-playing and other fan ideas flooded the Internet.

“I think it’s going to be kind of crazy that there aren’t going to be any more books or movies, and I know a lot of people are going to be disappointed simply because that’s what they’ve been doing for so long, and it’s what they’ve been looking forward to every year,” Brandy Flower, a senior management major, said.

Although the books have ended and the filming has completed, fans still follow their passion with podcasts, trips to London and even college classes, such as Battling Against Voldemort offered at Swarthmore University in  Swarthmore, Penn. and Finding Your Patronus offered at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore.

While these help fans to stay connected with their inspiration, many still hope to find something that will impact pop culture as much as Harry did.

“I can’t think of anything yet.” Kelly said. “While many of the same young people have turned to “Twilight” and “Percy Jackson,” neither of those books nor anything else that is new in the teen section seems to be as well-written or original as Harry Potter was when it first came out.”

Kelly said it will take more than a storyline revolving around a paranormal teen romance or another magical school to engage and reunite the Harry Potter fans for another midnight book-release party.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the last movie of the series, premieres July 15.