Harry Potter and Movie Moments

Earlier this summer I put out a request for guest bloggers, and three kind souls answered the call. If you haven't read the two previous guest posts from David and Munk, they are definitely worth a look. Today's guest is known on the blog as Squilla's Aunt. She doesn't have her own blog, so she is really putting herself out there with this post. Let's give her some love in the comments.

I went to see Harry Potter 7, Part 2 opening weekend. I read all the books, saw all the movies, and was really anticipating this one. So much so, in fact, that I brought a pack of Kleenexes. The book gets me every time, in two specific places (and these shouldn’t be spoilers to anyone, should they? Consider yourself duly warned, if you haven’t finished reading Book 7: SPOILERS AHEAD, for the book and the movie.): first, when Harry is walking to meet Voldemort in the forest, and his parents and Sirius appear to him. Second, when Book 7 ends, with Harry as an adult, waving at his kids on the Hogwarts train.

The forest scene was so unexpected for me and was so touching – the parents coming to support their son, to give him courage when he needed it most. Isn’t that what we all want at the end? The knowledge that we are loved and not alone?

And then there’s the train station scene. It was the end of all of it, the final goodbye, and a wave of grief just rose up in me reading through it. When the last words were read, it couldn’t be undone. All those of you who have loved a book, loved a character, loved the world that was created within the book – you know what I’m talking about.

So back to the Kleenexes. I was prepared for those two scenes – prepared for them to move me to tears, to see and feel them in all their visual glory on the big screen. But one of the things I love most about books and movies is when out of nowhere, there’s a moment, and it just ambushes you.

For me, watching the movie, the moment was when the professors began to use all their experience, knowledge and strength to cast a protective web around Hogwarts. There was something so powerful about it – when those who had bided their time under evil began to step out and fight. And then the students joined in, taking up their own wands and standing side-by-side with their elders, as full partners in the fight.

Doesn’t sound like much, I know. I’m not going to be able to describe what it did in me or do it justice. I don’t even expect that it will be “the moment” for anyone else. But for me, that was when the Kleenexes came out, that’s when it all came alive for me, that’s what will stick.

What was one of your ‘moments’? What book, what film, had a moment that ambushed you, that sticks with you even now?