Harry Freaking Potter

I hate Harry Potter. Okay, correction, I hated Harry Potter. I mean, I really hated it. I absolutely refused to read the books, even though all my friends loved them. I HATED HATED HATED Harry Potter. I would've rather died than read those books. Yes, I can be a little melodramatic at times.

So, I got to high school, and I meet this girl (let's call her, um, Destiny, to protect her top secret identity) who was (and still is) super obsessed with the books. I mean SUPER obsessed. Like she knows the Ministry of Magic's phone number kind of obsessed. Her and some other girls in my class would amuse themselves by asking me HP trivia questions like "What house does Harry belong to?" and "What is Harry's best friend's name?". Oh, ha ha ha, Katherine didn't know any of the answers. Ha ha ha (and to you HP fanatics reading this and laughing you too can shut up. Now.). I retaliated by asking Friends trivia questions like "Who does Monica end up with?", and then laughing right back at her.

This war continued for quite some time until we made a bet. I would read all the HP books and she would watch all the episodes of Friends. Ambitious? Yes. A giant waste of time? Maybe. So much fun? You betcha! So, she had the easy task of watching The Best Show of All Time (one day I will have write a tribute post to Friends, I can't resist), I had to read thousands of pages about stupid child wizards:

This is not one of those stories that ends all "I was wrong, everyone else was right and Harry Potter changed my life forever!" No, after many, many, many hours I finished all seven books, and you know what I had to say? Big woop. They are not THAT good. I mean, sure, they are well written. And I liked a few of the story lines. But overall? Not so great...

I mean, I'm glad I read them (and not just because people have stopped laughing at me). Me, the great romantic, loved this couple:

(And I'm not such a Daniel Radcliffe-Bonnie Wright fan, so I choose the illustrated version)

As well as this couple:

(I do like Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, though)

And I did become obsessed in my own chick-lit-loving-hopeless-romantic kind of way. I memorized which page Ron and Hermoine kiss on (page 502, HP and The Deathly Hollows, in case you were wondering). And I reread the part after the Quidditch match in HP6 a zillion times (which is why I was so mad when they cut that part from the movie!).

There is no grand lesson from this story (thank god, I hate preachy things like that). I just wanted to share my thoughts on the books (and the highest grossing film franchise of all time). Harry Potter's alright. Nothing special. In my opinion.