book 7 is coming. be ready.

If you've been living under a rock for some time, I'm going to tell you: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the 7th and last book of the ten-years-in-the-making Harry Potter series, comes out at 12:01 on Saturday.

I'm very excited.

I get like this with any series of books in which I'm all invested in the characters. To me, any writer who can make me feel like I know his or her characters personally is a good writer--even when it makes me look superdorky, talking about (and caring about! and crying over!) the characters like they really exist. Like, they're real live people whose lives will continue on even if we don't get to read about it.

But this one gets me even more excited because there are movies! And merchandise! And book release parties! And billions of other fans who want to do nothing else but theorize on what's going to happen in the very last book!!! So, it's all pretty intense. Which cracks me up because if you're not a fan, you probably haven't even noticed.

"Hm? Harry Potter? Are those books still around?" :)

So yeah, the hubby and I went to see Order of the Phoenix the other night, which just served to feed my pottermania, and as I watched the movie that tried to cram the longest book of the series into the shortest movie of the series I couldn't help but glance over at hasn't-read-the-books hubby and wonder if he had any idea what was going on. Cuz, you know, there is just so much to everything. He said he liked it OK, but of course that's only because he has no idea of the vast array of information he is missing.

Like, OK. Where to start.

[Oh, and Spoiler Alert in case you haven't seen OotP yet, or read the book. In which case, get a move on already.]

[Ready??]

[I warned you.]

[OK.]

• We never see Sirius's dear old mum. We just hear her mumbling behind her curtain. Frankly, I think this is a good thing. But still.
• There's no sense of how they spend the entire summer cleaning the house, and how Kreacher sneaks stuff off.
• The whole bit with Molly and the boggart? Not there.
• No indication of the new Divination teacher or how he got booted from the forest.
• No Quidditch. I know!!
• Cho is substituted as the squealer, revealing the DA, courtesy of Veritaserum.
• The fight at the Ministry is cut super-short. There's no brains trying to eat Ron (poor kid gets no scenes nowadays), no spinning hall of doors, hardly any evidence of all the kids' hard work in the DA paying off.
• The whole bit with Rita Skeeter and the way Hermione blackmails her? Gone.

[/spoiler alert]

Basically, everything is on fast-forward. I know that they didn't cut out anything superimportant, but jeez, I could have standed it being like twice as long, at least. All the fun stuff was gone, like Ron taking the lucky potion (that was OotP, right? crap, I'm all confused. better read them all again.) All my favorite actors (Emma Thompson! Helena Bonham Carter!) and characters (Mad Eye! Tonks!!) were on screen for like, two seconds.

The wierdest thing about the movie, though? Everyone looks so old! I mean, of course the kids do. But in one scene there was a close shot of McGonagall and I wanted to cry, she looked so old! And Hagrid, and Snape...(My apologies to the actors--I should say you look older, not just old. It's just weird. It's like seeing your aunt when she's 38 and not seeing her again til she's 58.)

Ugh, I have to go. It's 1am and I have lots of ebay posting to do and I just don't make any sense at this time of night. But anyway, if anyone in my area is going to a release party on Friday night, take me with you!! Just give me notice so I can grab a Mischief Managed tee shirt beforehand. :)