Plotting to grab Potter

As the wizardry fever reaches new heights worldwide with the long-awaited release of the final Harry Potter book, Smriti Daniel checks the pulse of local fans

In the pre-dawn darkness, 16-year-old Yazdan Sameer flings out an arm to switch off the shrill alarm. Rubbing the drowsiness from his eyes, he gets out of bed, and gets dressed. Half an hour later, after stopping to pick up a friend, he and his father make their way to Bambalapitiya junction and the large bookstore there. A quick glimpse at his watch – 5 a.m. – reveals that he has plenty of time. When he gets there, the store is still dark, and the lights are off. Yazdan settles down to wait on the steps; no doubt he will soon have more company. He has done this before and he knows he will do this once more – perhaps for the last time.

A poster heralding the new arrival at a Vijitha Yapa bookshop. Pic by J. Weerasekera

That was in 2005, and in just 6 more days, Yazdan, along with millions of other Harry Potter fans, will quite readily sacrifice sleep and comfort to get their hands on their very own copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ as soon as it goes on sale. It is a moment that promises to be an almost transcendent one for an astonishing number of readers; a moment of trepidation and wonder that marks our long awaited reunion with some very old and very dear friends.

For almost every one of these readers, the book in their hands is already familiar. They have pored over the cover for clues, greedily absorbed tiny details (including the exact number of pages, 784), imagined numerous scenarios, and the consequent unfolding of answers to hundreds of questions. And they have done this in the millions – the young and the old, the thin, the fat, the bachelor alone in his room, the mother and her family of four, the teenage girl, the aging rock star – all these wildly different people suddenly bound by a love for these books. Inevitably then, reading a Harry Potter has also become an extraordinarily social experience.

“It just becomes so big,” says Subha Wijesiriwardene (19), “everyone around you is a Harry Potter fan and so you’re surrounded.” It’s one of the easiest things to get talking about, she admits, adding that in the long wait between books, “you end up discussing all these theories about what’s going to happen in the next book with friends, and even among family.” And the discussions are getting increasingly heated. Is Snape truly evil? How will Harry beat Voldemort when the two seem intimately connected at so many different levels? Many more are bound to die, will it be someone we cannot bear to lose?

Fans have taken to re-reading all six of Deathly Hallows’ predecessors not only in an attempt to glean answers to these questions but also as a literary aperitif to the release of the latest print or movie instalment. It’s the smart thing to do for fans like Afra Aziz (27), considering that she first read Harry Potter seven years ago and the details occasionally do get a little hazy. “I guess you could say that, I've been reading and re-reading these books throughout my journey into adulthood – and I find that each time it’s different,” she says, adding, “as I’ve matured, the books have taken on a different meaning for me.”

And she’s very far from being Rowling’s only adult fan. Though the books are ostensibly written for children, “adults will have greater appreciation for the plot construction, language and imaginative genius of the stories,” says Prasana Abeysekera (52) wryly.

In the meantime, Afra is looking forward to sharing these books with her children, but is glad that when the Deathly Hallows comes out, her son will still be too young to wrest her copy from her. Yazdan isn’t so lucky, and laughingly admits that he will rush home to read the Potter book because he knows he will only have it until his sister wakes.

Adventure, humour, escapism – it’s true that the series offers all these. But more than one fan will be willing to fight you, tooth, nail and word, if you tried to dismiss them as nothing more than that. Not surprisingly then, detractors of the series who have derided the books as poorly crafted and entirely unoriginal have found their corner sparsely populated. Even for those who do not entirely approve of content, it’s hard to argue with the results – recent studies have credited the books with actually increasing literacy among the young.

The 2006 Kids and Family Reading Report released details of a survey that found that 51% of Harry Potter readers between ages 5-17 said that they did not read books for fun before they started reading Harry Potter, but now they did. The study further reported that according to 65% of children and 76% of parents, their children's performance in school improved since they started reading the series. Having sold over 325 million copies, Rowling herself has become the highest earning novelist in literary history.

The phenomenon has spread to Sri Lanka, where retailers like Vijitha Yapa Bookshops have found interest in children’s literature increasing, revealed Mr. Vijitha Yapa. The demand for books – Harry Potter books in particular has frequently exceeded expectations and the number of pre-orders placed for each release has increased dramatically, with orders for the seventh book inevitably breaking all records. And though this is the last book in the series, the effect of its extraordinary popularity will no doubt linger, both for booksellers as well as for their young readers.

Now as D-day draws closer, you can practically smell the anticipation in the air. Costume parties and get-togethers have been planned all over the city; the face painters will soon be churning out Potters with a quick flick of a paintbrush across a small forehead, balloons and stickers will be given away, while books fly off the shelf. But in the end, the truest magic will be when the solitary reader first opens the book and begins to read.