It’s probably really easy to be overly critical of the way it’s written (some say “poorly”) i.e. very short sentences repeated lines and so on, but the fact is, Rowling created an unbelievably detailed world with every micro detail connecting. She made something that is far bigger than even she could have imagined. It’s an open world, so it could go on forever and that’s such a clever idea. I’m not saying she’s the greatest writer I’ve ever read by any means, but she is by far one of the best story tellers. Regarding Harry’s role in the writing of the books, I really appreciated that for almost the entirety of the series, we only got the knowledge as and when Harry got it. If something happened when he wasn’t there, we didn’t know about it. There were some obvious exceptions a bit later on, but they were few and far between. It seems like an obvious thing to say ‘well of course, he’s the title character, it’s about him’, but I’ve read far too many books that try and describe how the main character knows what happened, even when they were nowhere to be seen. They seem to be able to tell someone’s whole life story by a look they have in their eyes, and it’s annoying and boring and takes you out of the story. It meant you understood entirely about his isolation, and isolation is a huge theme in almost all these character’s lives. The anguish that was shared between Snape and Harry was the one time neither of them would have had to suffer in isolation, but he was never able to divulge. Harry constantly being described as having his mum’s eyes, his Dad’s temperament, it was just one big confusing pot of emotions. The last thing Snape ever did was look into those eyes again…the ones that were so like the ones he loved. Almost like the last thing he wanted to see, even if it wasn’t coming from the right face. I obviously didn’t have any idea why “look at me” in the book was so important until the pensieve chapter, and at the time I thought he was going to confess something. That was me holding on to one piece of hope that he was the good guy. The reality was way worse.

I have to say, I did find it comforting that Harry’s parents didn’t come back as ghosts. They clearly weren’t scared of death (as mentioned early in the series ghosts are there due to the humans being afraid of death) and died under no doubt about wanting to protect him. It struck me that support and trust are also big themes, which are a whole lot happier than isolation and dying family members. Their strong bonds and the ‘friendship (never ends)’ Spice Girls style song that they would all no doubt be singing together, was very cute.

I didn’t grow up reading the book like almost all the fan base did, so the feeling of them being my friends was totally lost on a 27-year-old. However, if I had started reading the books at the so-called “right time” I certainly would have felt that way! I can absolutely understand why as a young reader the same age as the characters, going through school and dealing with the same emotions as them, you could get very caught up and see them as peers. It’s like I’ve said before, she had a very clever way of making them real and relatable, even though they could make themselves invisible and turn into anyone they wanted. I’d be the person that’s in charge of the Barbie Instagram account btw! (Hint, hint)