“Riddikulus with Elise & Sydney” is a column about the Harry Potter series. A new column is posted every other Wednesday. Columns may contain spoilers.
Every good ending is bittersweet. If there is no sadness, then it was not meaningful enough. If it is just sad, then it was just bad.
Like the ending to the seventh Harry Potter book, the end of our senior year brings a whirlwind of emotions. Joy, relief, nostalgia, relief, anxiety about being a “grown up,” and then more relief that we will never have to do summer AP homework again.
All of these emotions — minus the homework part — can be carried over to the ending of Harry Potter.
There’s joy because you get to meet the characters children in the epilogue. Relief because Harry did not actually die. Nostalgia because you feel like a part of your childhood is over. And anxiety because Luna and Neville did not get married.
As we close our high school career, we also end this column. It will not be continued next year, so, this is it. This thought fills us with sadness. Writing these entries has truly been both a pleasure and a learning experience. We got to delve deeper into the novels than we would have otherwise.
It also brings a sense of pride. We have made our mark on The Feather forever. The entries will always be in the archives. Everyone has in them a desire to be noticed and to make a difference and this column was our way of doing that.
Now, as we move on to the new world of college and adulthood (so weird!), we finish up the ending chapters to the first book of our lives. Just like finishing the final Harry Potter book, we race though the last pages, soaking up every word and every moment as we go.
When we finish the book, we will feel a sense of loss. There will be no more books, and we will not be able to see the same characters again. However, the lessons that we learned from those characters will stay in the back of our memories, like a great novel sitting on our bookshelf.
However, just like our favorite characters in the Harry Potter series, we can now begin a new story. We have no idea what is going to happen next, but that is how every great adventure begins.
The blank page is now before us, and we cannot wait to begin writing.
For the previous installment, read the April 27 column, Riddikulus with Elise and Sydney: What the movies leave out.
