<center>Harry Potter and the Significance of Void
a short chronicle by The Gnasher</center>

The first contact I had to a Harry Potter book was through an aunt. She bought in 1997 in Amazon a book that she said 'was making big success out there' and gave me as a gift. By the time, I hadn't had the least interest and didn't even know english. The book, I found out years later when cleaning the bookcase up, turned out to be the US first edition of Philosopher's Stone. I'm sure that after some years, the value of this edition will be nothing to ignore. But moving on. It was not until that same book translated was published in Brasil (yes, I still refuse to write my country's name with a 'z'), in 2000, that I actually read it. After some basic math, I discover that I was 10 at the time. As I am 16 now. And thus, the first not-quite-revelation: I've grown up with this series. It has accompanied me in my growth. It's always been a part of my life.

Years pass. For the third and fourth book, I bought the Portugal editions in a book exhibition. I was too eager to learn what was going to happen in Hogwarts that I couldn't just wait for the brasilian one. The fifth book was the first one that I tried to read in english; having poor english at the time, I didn't succeed, and waited patiently for the translated version. When the sixth book came, I went straight for the english original and swallowed it in 3 days. Now, it's been two days since I've got my hands on the english version of the seventh and last book, and I have just finished ravaging its 750 pages. The second not-quite-revelation: Finally... it's over. It's done and finished.

Now, the shock: after finishing the last sentence and closing the book... a void. I feel some sort of empty space, something is lacking from somewhere. It's always a bit rough when it happens. Honestly said, I have the same feeling when someone I know dies. The feeling when that space in your mind which was reserved to expecting something to happen in the future is filled with the certain that, in that matter, there won't be any future. It is sad, a kind of melancholy, and longing for something that you know does not exist anymore. The third not-quite-revelation is that I am sad this series has ended.

I am sure that all over the world kids who weren't the least bit exceptional, had trouble finding friends, were bullied, or all of those problems found comfort in the book about Harry Potter, a kid their age, but quite exceptional. I'm sure those problematic kids all found rather amazing when the poor, mistreated and sad Harry actually turned out to be mankind's most amazing offspring. No. I was never one of those kids. As much as I had my fair share of trouble during school times, I was always too anchored to the real world to feel envy, jealousy or longing for something that was only as concrete as a fictional story can be. It comes, the fourth not-quite-revelation: I discover that I have no idea why I am so sad it is over, and I start to wonder why it actually meant something to me all those years of my life that I spent with those books. I had never stopped to think about that before.

Quite the contrary, I never liked Harry Potter himself. My opinion has always been that the title character of the books was an egocentric, self-centered, spoiled altruist... and was also the proof that those traits could reside together within a person. The brat Potter was never on my favorite character's list. Then why, why were those books so important to me that they leave such a void when they end? You'd think I'd have stopped reading years ago if there was nothing tying me up to the story.

Suddenly, the answer comes, as if enlightened; it's all about the setting. Not the whole setting, but one specific part of it: Hogwarts, the school. I say it again, it's not that I envied it or wanted to be a part of that world. For the first time, words fail me to describe the feeling... the closest I can get to it is that everything was, after all, a good read. Rowling managed to create, in her neverending imaginative power, a world that breathed. The school was alive, and the scenario was alive. You shared your feelings with the characters, laughed and cried and feared with them. You believed, not that they could do magic, but that they were human. Even the bratty main character had his reasons for being such a stubborn egoist; who could blame him?

Rowling's greatest achievement was not telling us about the story of a boy around whom the world turned. No. It was letting us take part in that lively, breathing, and believable world where that boy lived in; it was letting us share relationships, hatreds and romances as if they were happening in the real world. It was creating an universe so full of natural and, above all, human people that it didn't obfuscate the real world which we live in, but made our world even more shinier: standing below it as fictional support, Rowling's universe made our real world stand out more. And that, I might add, is one hell of a difficult achievement.

The fifth and last not-quite-revelation is that I loved, and I will surely miss, that universe.

So now, I propose a toast to Joanne Rowling, and hereby congratulate her on writing what probably has become a part of many around the world, as it most surely has become a part of me.

Ahoy, mateys.

Cheers.