Harry Potter Returns to Hogwarts: Remembering 20+ Years Growing Up Alongside the Famous Trio
Watching HBO Max’s “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” evoked far more memories of my own life than it did of the films.
I have been anticipating the HBO Max release of “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” for months. The trailer teased emotional reunions, a return to the original sets, and behind-the-scenes footage from a world I have loved for as long as I can remember. What surprised me, but perhaps shouldn’t have, was the flood of memories — not of scenes from Harry Potter but my own life, growing up alongside the characters and actors (who admit, are not so far removed).
It has been twenty years since the premiere of the first Harry Potter movie. I still remember sitting in the dark theater with my parents at nine years old. Wide-eyed in amazement, I couldn’t believe that I was seeing Harry flying on a broomstick right before my eyes. An undercurrent of excited anticipation hummed throughout the theater. During the first film’s release, the audience already knew the plot — the excitement was for the magic of art and the thrill of seeing a new representation of a story we loved.
This morning, I turned on the “Return to Hogwarts” special as a completely different person in a completely different world. I’m 29, watching on a streaming service that would have seemed futuristic and unimaginable to me in 2001. Today, my own children played by my side, too young to be interested. The Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone film release was in a newly post 9/11 world. Today’s world is as scary as ever — a global pandemic unrelentingly changing everything about our day-to-day lives.
Within the first six minutes, my eyes filled with tears. The camera cuts away from scenes of the actors returning to the set, and an old news clip appears. In it, hundreds of kids and adults wait in lines at midnight to buy Harry Potter books. I remember being in those lines, feeling not-so-alone in my love of reading, experiencing a real-life community that extends beyond the books and films.
I didn’t start reading the series until Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had been released. My aunt and older cousin were always raving about the books. I wanted to be in on the fun, to be a part of their conversations on characters and making predictions. By the time Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released, I was going with my cousin to buy our copies at midnight.
We lay on our stomachs on the floor in her room, reading the entire night. It didn’t matter that our elbows dug into the carpet and our eyes burned; mentally, we were transported to another world. My cousin was a bit faster at reading, and she’d pause periodically to exclaim and look at me in shock. I’d read faster, trying to catch up. Eventually, we fell asleep, our noses bookmarking the page. We read over breakfast and on and on until the end. I considered it a great accomplishment to finish an entire book in one day, bragging to our grandparents about the midnight excursion and marathon reading. From then on, I bought every newly released book in the dark of the night.
In 2009, the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince film was released. I was in between my sophomore and junior years in high school, studying abroad in Egypt through a National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program. The experience was truly transformative. For the first time, I saw what it would look like to live in a Muslim-majority country. I had never been outside of the United States and had only seen Islam in the context of a religious minority. Living with a host family, studying Arabic, and being brave in exploring a strange new place was like living my very own Harry Potter adventure.
That July, I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in the theater of an Egyptian mall on an outing with exchange students and our host families. The experience was different! There was assigned seating and an intermission. Arabic subtitles flashed across the screen. I loved seeing my American and Egyptian friends bonding over the movie together — another commonality in my new community. Before returning to the states, my host sister gifted me an Arabic version of Goblet of Fire. It’s still on my bookshelf, twelve years later.
The final Harry Potter movie came out a month after I graduated from high school. An end of a chapter for an end of a chapter. Over the years, Harry Potter movies and books were the foundation of other special memories — I once had a student in my high school English class who knew that I loved the series, and we had a short conversation about our favorite characters. I shared that mine was Sirius Black. Weeks later, he gave me an aluminum copy of Sirius Black’s wand. He had made a mold and forged it himself, learning a new skill while completing his graduation project.
When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I was pregnant with my first child. I showed up at Barnes and Noble at midnight, just like I had so many times before. I wore a maternity shirt that glowed in the dark, reading “Mischief Managed”. I returned home and read all night, one hand on my belly and the other holding the book. It wasn’t lost on me that while I was about to welcome a child into the world, this new Harry was a father with a child having adventures of his own.
I have returned to Harry Potter many times in my adult life, especially when I’m feeling lost or unsure. After graduating college in the middle of a year, I took a long-term substitute position as a Metals teacher in a high school. I have no experience or certification in Metals — I’m a certified English teacher. There was no time to find a certified teacher with just a few months left in the school year. My job was to keep the students supervised until the semester ended. That meant, to the frustration of all, that the shop was locked up. During that month or so, I reread the Harry Potter series for the first time as an adult. The experience brought me much-needed joy and comfort during long days sitting in a windowless room feeling useless.
In 2019, I started listening to a podcast called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text on the recommendation of a fellow English teacher. I fell in love immediately. The podcasters tackle a chapter of Harry Potter in each episode. It’s a balance of a fun, featuring a 30-second recap challenge, and serious reflection. Each chapter is discussed by analyzing a theme using the strategies most often used with spiritual text. Listening has had a positive impact on the way that I read, write, and analyze literature. Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is another example of community that extends beyond the franchise.
In the summer of 2020, I signed up for a virtual Harry Potter summer camp hosted by the producers of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. At the time, Covid was spreading rapidly. I had just finished three months of teaching classes virtually, a change that happened almost overnight. Instead of feeling excited about summer break, I was overwhelmed. How could I make space for myself when I was spending energy entertaining my kids and preparing for the next (possibly virtual!) school year? The virtual camp, designed for people of all ages, was a structured time that I took for myself. And in it, I found not only a community of folks who loved Harry Potter but one who loved to create and tell stories.
Telling stories is, of course, an integral part of the new 20 year anniversary special. In it, the actors recount what it felt like to grow up as real people at the same time as the characters they portrayed. Beyond the famous trio, Emma Watson also reflects on her female co-stars, feeling pride in their activism as adults. Given the themes of the books and films, it’s no wonder that so many of us who grew up alongside the series carry a sense of justice and reckoning into our own lives — even when it impacts a series that we love. Only a few short clips of J.K. Rowling, filmed in 2019, are included in the “Return to Hogwarts” special. Potter fans, including the leading actors, have taken a stance against her transphobic rhetoric, striving to find a way to love the series separate from Rowling. You can read Rori Porter’s take on striking this balance here.
Broadly speaking, the book and film series impacted the great arc of my life. Harry Potter is more than the sum parts of its storyline. In it, I found something much more critical than an escape to a magical world — an early love of reading, writing, and building community. I became an English teacher and an organizer fighting with educators for the future of public schools. And for my daughters, whether or not they love Harry Potter, is not important — I only hope that they find art that is a source of guidance and inspiration, one that is relevant for the world in which they live.