TIMES I CRIED

(or teared up, or made that little squeak that you're trying to not cry, etc.)

* You remember that split second scene in the trailer of Tonks and Lupin reaching out to each other from towers, but unable to reach? Amazing how much sadder that is when it's twenty feet tall

* the end of Snape's memories, as he talks to Dumbledore over the scene of the Potters' deaths. Dangit, Alan Rickman!

* I CANNOT EVEN DEAL WITH "I OPEN AT THE CLOSE." (Fun fact: when I need a good cry to get it out of my system--something that girls sometimes need--I read that section from the book. And it never fails.)

* end of King's Cross. Frakking Michael Gambon.

* "19 years later"

* when I realized they were playing the original "Hedwig's Theme," written for the first movie, over the end credits


I don't have the awakeness left to me right now to write about the end of Harry Potter (filmwise), as several others have done. It's not really the end of my childhood, since the books didn't come out until I was in high school (and the first movie came out my senior year); I didn't "grow up with Harry" as the teenagers and early twenty-somethings of my acquaintance did. But the books--and by virtue of them not screwing them up royally, the movies--have been a big part of my life. I'm glad they exist if for no other reason than kids of the future need better role models than the Twilight bunch (Hermione Granger vs. Bella Swan - GO!). All three leads of the books/movies are flawed characters, but they fight for the best and the general good, even as they stumble around and make mistakes and bicker a bit and are sometimes completely wrong. I can relate more than a little.