What are some of the feelings/beliefs about HP you recall having when you first read the books, which have since been displaced by other beliefs?

I still remember when I first read Philosopher's Stone back in 1999, being quite troubled by how silly the word "Hogwarts" sounded. I was big into LotR back then and felt very strongly that fantasy was Serious Business. But I can't remember the last time I actually contemplated how silly it is for a major cultural institution to be named "Hogwarts".

Similarly, I remember when GoF came out, feeling like "Avada Kedavra" was far too silly an incantation for the Killing Curse, being an obvious riff on "Abra Kebabra". But by the end of the book, the phrase had achieved sinister associations and had displaced "Abra Kebabra" entirely.

 

They took my school by storm. Within like two weeks, half of the people in the school had either the scholastic hardcovers with the Mary Grandpre art (which are still the copies I read and are one of my prized possessions), or the softcover 3 book bundle. I remember some random things, like no one knew how Dobby was pronounced, or that Sirius being a major plot point in book 3, but being mentioned in book 1 was the major world shattering easter egg that people couldn't wait to share with each other.

I'm not sure if it was an American thing, with us getting the first 3 books at once, though I'm sure I could google it. So when book 4 came out, it was the first "new" release, and had tons of hype around it. At that point, we were like 12 years old, so the prospect of reading a thousand page book to the casual fan would've been intimidating, but everyone powered though it, and it became a bit of a meme, as it appeared that every book was only getting longer than the previous, so we'd try and guess how long we thought the final book would be.

 

I got HBP a day early through a… source, let‘s say. Reading the first chapter and the meeting of the Ministers, the power I felt was exquisite.

 

Uh, first time I hear about this "Abra Kebabra", I guess it's a UK thing. Avada Kedavra comes from Abracadabra.

Death Eater, though, that always struck me as rather childish. Who would ever join some guys calling themselves Death Eaters?

 

Not a UK thing, just a typo.

 

I think I was young enough I just took the books completely at face value. There was really never a point where I thought 'no, that doesn't work' until I got to the seventh book.

 

The clearest thing I can remember is not knowing how Hermione was pronounced until book four. In my head it was always Her-My-Own until she helped Krum pronounce her name.

 

I remember being disappointed by the maze in the GoF. Similarly, the second task wasn't what I hoped it to be either. Like, it all began super cool with dragons, and I expected it would grow more and more dangerous and as cool, but the lake was a huge disappointement, and as for the maze, it took me years to realize Harry didn't encounter anything because we was helped by fake Moody.

I must say though, I was very very hyped by the idea of tournament. Devoured the book.

 

My immediate thought was, "Someone definitely needs to open an Abrakebabra kebab shop." Apparently it's a thing in Ireland, haha.

 

I remember for...certainly OOTP, maybe GoF, my dad and I picking up our copies first thing, and then racing each other to the final chapter. We might have done it for HBP as well, but I wouldn't swear to it.

Also for OOTP, I remember going on a school trip for a few days not long after it came out, and lending my copy to one of my more attractive classmates who hadn't read it yet, while I only had it with me for my second read through.

For DH, my main memory is kinda sorta spoiling it a little for my then girlfriend by mentioning Draco appearing in the epilogue.

 

I used to love Hagrid's coat. The description of him taking out a kettle and sausages and all the other stuff from his pockets was just so enchanting to 11-year-old me. But then I got desensitised to it and didn't think about it twice - until the illustrated editions came out, and I had a kind of "Oh yeah...." moment, like when a particular smell brings back a memory you hadn't thought about in a long time, and remembered so acutely my childhood love of that scene.

 

Dobby as like Adobe
Dobby as in Dahbby

 

So many memories attached to them. I was a speedreader as a child and around 9 I was devouring a book a day on average, I'd read all of interest at the local library and I was attempting to read my parents books (apparently they found a very old translation of 1984 underneath my pillow). My dad started bringing home books he found on discount for me, usually not very good ones. He got PS and PoA at once, and I remember not being too impressed with the first chapter of PS, but then just absolutely falling in love. I re-read them constantly, all other books were left alone, and I remember trying to piece together what might have happened in CoS, the one I was missing. There was a reference in PoA to Ginny acting even more embarrassed than usual around Harry because he'd saved her life last year. I can still remember my dad knocking on my bedroom door and coming in, looking so so smug and holding CoS. I think I cried. GoF came out soon after that, and looking at my collection of them in different languages now, GoF in Swedish is almost completely done for, the pages are coming out.

The night I turned 11, I recall reading PS and trying to time it with the scene where Harry turns 11.

Anyway, I had a weird interest in people with red hair as a kid, I think from other books like Anne of Greengables and Jack and Ann from one of Blyton's series, and I had a friend who was the same way and I remember us both wishing we were old enough to dye our hair red. I remember loving the Weasley twins, I must have been just the right age for them to seem like the coolest people alive, but just in general I loved reading about the Weasley family and kept imagining what it would be like to visit like Harry did in CoS and GoF.

For the seventh, I remember calling ahead to the bookshops near us to ask if they still had it. My mum drove myself and several other friends there to buy it in the morning, and then there was an unsaid competition about who would finish it first. I think I was done at half past three in the morning, but I can't remember anymore if I won or not.

Speaking of spoilers, the newspaper, which we had in the car on the way to the shops, had a review of it, I'm assuming a journalist who had gotten it at midnight in another country had skimmed a few chapters and then written the review. Problem was, that review spoiled that Hedwig died, which was really not cool. More spoiling it for myself, but I remember the first thing I did when I got it was to check what the very last word was, all that talk about the last word being 'scar' and then that she'd decided to change it to something else.

I think I loved them completely unequivocally, I can't remember being very critical of anything. I did try to figure all the little mysteries out in the latter ones, and I remember realizing Lupin would die when he made Harry godfather and I just felt so sad despite it being a happyish moment in the book. Like with many international readers, some of the magic later turned out to be just normal British things. I know some translations changed some country-specific things to make them easier to grasp, and translated names and things like that, but the ones I read kept pretty much all of the British stuff. Hermione and McGonagall were the most difficult to read, took me ages to stop mispronouncing them even after I'd learnt a bit of English. But yeah, the good thing is that I could fall in love all over again with them in English because of all the little language puns that are in them that I had no way of catching in my mother tongue.

 

I reread them all in lockdown last year and a few memories came to the fore. Mostly how angry I was when I read DH for the first time and Harry uses Wingardium Leviosa to try and keep Hagrid's bike up in the air. I still kind of hate it.

 

Some smoothbrain decided it must be stressed on the second syllable and went around saying "Duh-bee".

Hogwarts in Polish was just "Hogwart" (in Polish, "w" is pronounced like "v") and, without the knowledge of English (pig pimples) it sounded like a perfectly cool made up fantasy castle name, like Minas Tirith or anything else out of LotR. On the other hand, "wand" in Polish is "różdżka" and I'm sure it looks like someone just pressed the alt key and rolled their first over the lower left part of the keyboard randomly, but I assure you that's the real word. And I hate it. I hated reading it out loud and in my head, I hated writing it in Polish-language fanfic. I attribute my jump to English-language fandom largely to how stupid that word sounds.

 

Obviously it's 'Dobby' like 'Doggy', but in Scotland the 'Dobbies' Garden Centre chain are often called 'Dobbies' like 'Dough-bees'. Don't ask me why.

As far as nostalgia, I can remember the first time I heard about Harry Potter was in Primary School when my teacher at the time selected it as the class book (in 98-99). This involved us all sitting together and each reading sections out loud to the rest of the class in turn. The thing I mostly remember from this was the Mirror of Erised section, as the teacher drew the inscription out on the blackboard for us to work out.

When we finished it, I immediately went and got my parents to buy me Chamber of Secrets which I believe I devoured over the course of a single Saturday.

I can also remember the release of Prisoner of Azkaban. I was visiting family in Wales at the time, and took my father a lengthy search of every bookshop in south Wales looking for a copy of the newly released book. I then read that one over the course of one day. It was an 8 hour car journey to get back home, and I simply read for the entire journey.

Goblet of Fire was less of an event. I got it delivered on release, I think, but it doesn't have so many strong associations. Order of the Phoenix also got ordered for release, but I didn't read it for months after it arrived. I didn't read Half Blood Prince until a couple of years after its release, and Deathly Hallows had to wait until 2014 or so for me to actually read it.

 

Order of the Phoenix release day lines. Getting into the local K-Mart at 6am alongside half of Perth and then being confused between the ‘children’s’ cover art and the ‘adult’ cover art. I remember thinking they may actually be two different versions of story, not just art.

I… I wasn’t a smart kid.

 

I remember when I think order of the phoenix came out. Big midnight release party at the local bookstore, kids queueing up all down the street dressed in robes.

Some dude from my school got there ahead of everyone else, queued first in line and got the very first copy. He set it on fire and threw it into the crowd of kids queueing up.

 

When I first got into the series, I bought book 2 first, cause I compared the backside summaries of book 1 and 2 and found 2 much more interesting.

When the last book came out, I couldn't even wait for the local translation to come out (ended up taking half a year), so I instead read a quickly made fan translation on some website.