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 Mridula
Ramesh, college student, stands at the end of the queue, cursing
her alarm that went off one hour late. She bites her nail in
anxiety and all that she could see from the end of the line is
just tips of conical black hats with silver stars. She counts
every second that passes by and eagerly waits to grab her
solution to get over the month-long longing. And, finally, the
magic wand is waved for the release of much awaited J K Rowling’s
‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ which is also the final
book of the Harry Potter series. The release of the book had a
flavor of celebration mood among the fans.
 The
worldwide release of the famous Potter series was on July 21,
2007. Not long before, on July 13, the movie ‘Harry Potter and
the Order of Phoenix’ was released (English and Tamil) in India
and is a box office hit.
Though Landmark in Nungambakam, Chennai,
announced that the book release would take place at 5.30 a.m.,
people started to queue up there from 3.30 a.m. onwards! But as
the release got delayed, readers got impatient and the hum among
the crowd was controlled by the guards wearing sorting hats. By
6.10 a.m., when the book was distributed, there seemed no end to
the queue. Some of the fans of Harry Potter had come dressed as
Muggles and in Hogwarts Uniform to pick up their copies.
 Nayantara,
a school kid, was the fortunate and lucky one to have got the
first issue of the book. “I am so happy to be the first one. I
can’t wait to rush through the pages and find out what is going
to happen,” she said. Some of her friends were eager to know what
the first and last word of the book was! Upasna, another kid,
said she would take a week off from school to finish the book as
she thought Harry Potter was more important than anything else in
the world.
 One
of the facts was that it was not just school and college students
who were waiting in the queue but also parents of children.
Gajendran, a bank employee, was waiting in the queue from 5
O’clock in the morning. He said, “My son is a great fan of Harry
Potter. He is 10-years-old. Last night he was impatient to
collect the book. But I want to get the book before he wakes up
and give it to him as a surprise.”
 Readers
have so many expectations from the book. Some feel that Harry
will die and some feel Ron will die. And some expect a happy
ending like all other books. This book is sure going to be an
answer for those entire hypotheses! Though a happy ending is
expected from this book, it is not going to be a happy ending for
me, says Aishwarya Subramaniam, a final-year college student. “I
have been growing with these books. I read the first book when I
was 10 and ever since I have been living with these characters.
For me, this is not just going to be an end of the series but an
end of an era.”
 To
add on more spice to the release Landmark, which had ordered
about 850 books, had arranged Hogwarts tattoo free for children
and had built a Hogwarts castle. They started placing books in
racks only on July 20 night and were careful that no book was
opened before its legal release.
Hmm… ‘Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix’
movie on July 13, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ book
release on July 21 and musical play of “Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone” by the Landing Stage. No wonder July 2007 is
going to be engraved in the minds of the Potter fans!!
Dhivya
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