The Harry Potter franchise is nothing small mind you and the products that accompany that are quality, but there's even more to it than that. Whole childhoods were spent during the Potter era and what came from a book series that took JK Rowling a while to get published is amazing.
Personally I think part of the captivating magic of these books for those who grew up with them is that as our favorite characters grew up so did we, the fan base. When Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone first came out the story was a basic kids story about a boy with a miserable childhood finding out he's got this fantastic other life to live. By the time you get to the third book things begin turn from fantastically magical and stand alone-ish novels a continuous twisting plot with darkness hinted at and colored in. Our heroes are 13 years old and moving from children to teenagers, again, just like a majority of the readers. WE grew together and lived these adventures together.
With the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 many called it the end. After more than a decade of Potter it was over. Except, it isn't. Not really. One look at brilliantly created and maintained sites like http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org will tell you this is not the end. The Leaky Cauldron site in addition to being a social site dedicated to everything Potter also publishes their own editions of The Quibbler, a magazine publication mentioned in the Harry Potter series. Muggle.net is another beautifully designed Potter tribute website. I even found a recipe for butterbeer for a friend's birthday and it worked quite well.
Coming up on the horizon is the annual Leaky Con in August. You're probably rolling your eyes saying "but there's all kinds of wacky conventions for just about anything out there!" and that's true, there are, but there's more, Potter fans tend to be like family. We may not like every person we meet, or agree with every word uttered but we still have that one common link and could spend hours debating the finer detials and repercussions of those details to the plot. Not to mention JK Rowing herself's new Pottermore website.
From the world of Potter also came numerous (and I mean numerous) Wizard Rock bands, a whole new genre of music. As a kid I remember seeing a couple of Wizard Rock bands playing in the local park and to this day still have the CDs. I find it pretty funny that Wizard Rock even has it's own song describing it: Wizard Rock (The Boyz Who Lived)
A few other examples of Wizard Rock Songs
and some Bands and just an awesome original songs by a fans:
and some Bands and just an awesome original songs by a fans:
Harry Potter and the Potters
The Moaning Myrtle
We muggles have even gone so far as to create an imitation the wizarding sport of Quidditch, and I'm not talking a few kids running around pretending to fly, nope it's a full blown sport. Don't believe me? Check out Brooms Up, a documentary of the the Quidditch World Cup IV. That's right, a Quidditch World Cup with teams from all of the US, colleges like Harvard and even a few teams from Canada.
For us they weren't just books or movies, it was more. We are the Harry Potter generation and I may have spend a post rambling about nothing and I may have failed to truly convey what the Harry Potter generation was and is but I think if nothing else this YouTube video End of an Era - Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls and the description and of course the comments that go with it just about says it all better than I could have.
