And another one thing!
Jun. 20th, 2003 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkest_lightHARRY POTTER!!!!!
8 hours!!!!!!
But here's the thing. I'm at Relay For Life tonight, so I don't get the book until TOMORROW MORNING. It makes me so sad.
And people are talking about it everywhere. Alexmalfoy gets it in something like 5 minutes. Eleanor? It's 2 am for you now, isn't it? Are you doing the crazy midnight anticipation there? Alexmalfoy and Cassandra Claire are updating like crazy in anticipation. And all the people on the HPFGU list are updating like crazy. And last night I dreamed that I was reading it and Hermione jumped off a cliff and died and that was the death that was really hard for JKR to write and in my dream I was sobbing. Even though I know the death is going to be some riddiculus character who doesn't even show up until this book. I mean come on. "A special fan of Harry's" is going to die. When GoF came out "a major character" was going to die and everyone was worried about Ron and Hermione and Dumbledore and then Cedric Digory, who had been in one scene in book three, became a major character in book four. So. It's not going to be Ginny. It's not going to be Draco. It's not going to be Hagrid. It could be Colin (but he's been Petrified before and that would just be sad). It's going to be someone random who NOBODY has thought of before. And certainly Hermione is not going to be driven crazy by ghosts and jump off a cliff, like in my dream.
"Just for the record": I figure I might as well get my predictions out there before the book comes out, and we will find out whether I'm right or wrong.
Arabella Figg will be the new DADA teacher.
Maybe here or in book six they will finally get rid of Fudge as Minister of Magic, but Lucius Malfoy will take his place (probably at the very end of the series Arthur Weasley will end up as MOM).
Hermione and Ron will get together. I do not want to deal with another YEAR of romantic tension between them. But of course we need to get rid of Viktor first, because Hermione having a boyfriend could cause problems.
Something will happen with Cho Chang. (well, really, how could it not? Harry's crush combined with Cedric's death simply does not permit her fading into the background)
Harry and Draco will not get together, and Draco will continue to be his irritating canon self, but will not die, so the H/D people need to calm down.
It has been three years and there is finally a new book I am so so so excited but this media blitz is crazy it wasn't like this even with the last one and when book 3 came out I only saw it on the news once and it's spinning out of control and I am secretly evil and jealous and don't want to have to share the Harry Potter love with all those people who only became fans after the movies came out.
Flashback: July 2000. I'm in Santa Cruz, at the summer program for high school students thing. I go to Bookshop Santa Cruz the day GoF comes out. It's packed, and the only people who can even get near the counter are those who ordered GoF in advance. I stand and look longingly, knowing that our family ordered GoF from our book club a month or so before, and that it's going to be shipped home. But I want it then. In Santa Cruz. Without a 2-3 week wait before I can go home and read it. The next day, I come back to Bookshop Santa Cruz with a group of people to see a talk on Shakespeare. We arrive an hour early and James and I spend that hour sitting in the bookshop on a bench, both reading Harry Potter (incidentally, what is it with me and people named James? My life is filled with people named James). Eighty pages in, I reluctantly put the book down for the talk, and wait to read the book.
It's a similar anticipation now. Oh. My. Goodness. A new Harry Potter book. When GoF it wasn't as big a deal, as I had been HP-obsessed for only about a year. (I first read Sorcerer's Stone after Naomi bought it in the summer of '99 from the hippy bookstore by Jen's house and she had to force me to read it because the last book she'd wanted me to read was that Merlin book I didn't really enjoy. And then I was in love with the books forever and I read books two and three as soon as the media center got them, even though they weren't ready to be checked out yet, because I took them home and read until they were done and brought them back to the media center before school the next morning.) And GoF came out only a year after PoA did, so nobody was expecting a three-year wait. And then the wait got indefinite, because they were always posting different publishing dates, and it kept getting delayed more and more and I almost didn't believe it last November when they said it was going to come out this summer. I was in a place of scoffing.
But now it's really here and I'm going on and on like an idiot becuase I'm just so excited and it's another HARRY POTTER BOOK and it really exists.
8 hours!!!!!!
But here's the thing. I'm at Relay For Life tonight, so I don't get the book until TOMORROW MORNING. It makes me so sad.
And people are talking about it everywhere. Alexmalfoy gets it in something like 5 minutes. Eleanor? It's 2 am for you now, isn't it? Are you doing the crazy midnight anticipation there? Alexmalfoy and Cassandra Claire are updating like crazy in anticipation. And all the people on the HPFGU list are updating like crazy. And last night I dreamed that I was reading it and Hermione jumped off a cliff and died and that was the death that was really hard for JKR to write and in my dream I was sobbing. Even though I know the death is going to be some riddiculus character who doesn't even show up until this book. I mean come on. "A special fan of Harry's" is going to die. When GoF came out "a major character" was going to die and everyone was worried about Ron and Hermione and Dumbledore and then Cedric Digory, who had been in one scene in book three, became a major character in book four. So. It's not going to be Ginny. It's not going to be Draco. It's not going to be Hagrid. It could be Colin (but he's been Petrified before and that would just be sad). It's going to be someone random who NOBODY has thought of before. And certainly Hermione is not going to be driven crazy by ghosts and jump off a cliff, like in my dream.
"Just for the record": I figure I might as well get my predictions out there before the book comes out, and we will find out whether I'm right or wrong.
Arabella Figg will be the new DADA teacher.
Maybe here or in book six they will finally get rid of Fudge as Minister of Magic, but Lucius Malfoy will take his place (probably at the very end of the series Arthur Weasley will end up as MOM).
Hermione and Ron will get together. I do not want to deal with another YEAR of romantic tension between them. But of course we need to get rid of Viktor first, because Hermione having a boyfriend could cause problems.
Something will happen with Cho Chang. (well, really, how could it not? Harry's crush combined with Cedric's death simply does not permit her fading into the background)
Harry and Draco will not get together, and Draco will continue to be his irritating canon self, but will not die, so the H/D people need to calm down.
It has been three years and there is finally a new book I am so so so excited but this media blitz is crazy it wasn't like this even with the last one and when book 3 came out I only saw it on the news once and it's spinning out of control and I am secretly evil and jealous and don't want to have to share the Harry Potter love with all those people who only became fans after the movies came out.
Flashback: July 2000. I'm in Santa Cruz, at the summer program for high school students thing. I go to Bookshop Santa Cruz the day GoF comes out. It's packed, and the only people who can even get near the counter are those who ordered GoF in advance. I stand and look longingly, knowing that our family ordered GoF from our book club a month or so before, and that it's going to be shipped home. But I want it then. In Santa Cruz. Without a 2-3 week wait before I can go home and read it. The next day, I come back to Bookshop Santa Cruz with a group of people to see a talk on Shakespeare. We arrive an hour early and James and I spend that hour sitting in the bookshop on a bench, both reading Harry Potter (incidentally, what is it with me and people named James? My life is filled with people named James). Eighty pages in, I reluctantly put the book down for the talk, and wait to read the book.
It's a similar anticipation now. Oh. My. Goodness. A new Harry Potter book. When GoF it wasn't as big a deal, as I had been HP-obsessed for only about a year. (I first read Sorcerer's Stone after Naomi bought it in the summer of '99 from the hippy bookstore by Jen's house and she had to force me to read it because the last book she'd wanted me to read was that Merlin book I didn't really enjoy. And then I was in love with the books forever and I read books two and three as soon as the media center got them, even though they weren't ready to be checked out yet, because I took them home and read until they were done and brought them back to the media center before school the next morning.) And GoF came out only a year after PoA did, so nobody was expecting a three-year wait. And then the wait got indefinite, because they were always posting different publishing dates, and it kept getting delayed more and more and I almost didn't believe it last November when they said it was going to come out this summer. I was in a place of scoffing.
But now it's really here and I'm going on and on like an idiot becuase I'm just so excited and it's another HARRY POTTER BOOK and it really exists.
