(Warning: Not for the eyes of Muggles, spoilers ahead)
My childhood abruptly ended the moment Tonks and Lupin died. I distinctly remember crying so hard that I had to stop reading for a while, my vision blurred by the endless stream of tears. A little bit of hyper ventilating continued throughout the next 50 or so pages and the waterworks began as “All was well” was read off the page. It was over. Forever and always, the series that had shaped my entire childhood, the books that made me fall in love with reading, were done. Just like that. There were no more new books to look forward to, only the movie adaptations that somehow always manage to cut out my favorite scenes (still waiting for the extended edition that shows Harry crucioing one of the Carrows for spitting at McGonagall).
And then one fateful morning,112 weeks ago I got the best news of my life. Imagine Christmas, your birthday, and high school graduation all mixed into one moment and you might get close to the feeling of happiness that flowed through my veins the fateful day, that Fantastic Beast was announced. J.K. Rowling was expanding the Harry Potter universe?! They were going to make it into a trilogy?! After months of staring at my wall placated with the ominous burning Hogwarts scene from the seventh movie. On the bottom the words reading "It all ends here." But for the first time I had hope, my childhood began a mini revival, it wasn't over, not really. I immediately pulled the tiny book off my shelf and read through it at least five times.
Then a few months later Eddie Redmayne gets added to the cast, as the LEAD, sorry Daniel Radcliffe but Eddie wins for hottest lead wizard. He won the Oscar for Best Actor last year and now he's the lead in the first ever screen play written by J.K Rowling. This movie had my heart from the beginning.
Then on Friday Entertainment Weekly came out with the first sneak peeks of the movie and I had a minor panic attack from excitement. There's a whole new world being created in this prequel, they even have a different name for a muggle, a No-Maj (uhmm ok still not sure about this one... damn americans always screwing up good words). Maybe there was a brief mention of some wacky American wizards at the Quidditch World Cup but other than that this is completely new territory. There's going to be a whole new Hogwarts esc school? New wizards, new villains, new magical creatures, but the photos still bring an air of nostalgia with them.
The Restaurant sign, the fog, the striped black and yellow scarf, it's like Platform 9 3/4 is back in business. The glowing wand marks the seemingly ordinary scene as something magical. Yet there aren't wizarding robes, no tell tale scars who knows what this Newt characters going to be like. This is the first time I'll be seeing a movie in about the wizarding world and not knowing exactly what's coming. The first time I won't be critiquing every moment that doesn't live up to what imagined it to be from the book. It's going to be a whole new experience. Magazine articles, movie posters, minor plot drops, the movies finally starting to become real. Get excited everybody, the magic begins again November 18th, 2016.
