The eighth film of the seventh book ends fourteen years of Pottering. Some will thank the Spirit that they no longer have to encounter yet another iteration of a boy wizard’s climactic wand-out with He Who Is Continually Named. Many more will feel bereft. Harry Potter appeared when Bill Clinton was in the White House and a newly minted Tony Blair was in No 10, when the twin towers yet stood and it was always winter in Arabia. For a generation the star with the scar is their childhood and adolescence, and these pass as he does.
It may be too soon to assess the Rowling canon in terms of its impact on world literature and globalised culture. The chair in Harry Potter studies at A. C. Grayling’s New College has yet to be created and we are still waiting for the first literary biography of the author. What we have is still a mixture of impression, hype and sentiment.
Those who long ago lost patience with Hogwarts may point out that, in seven books — four of them unnecessarily long — there was just one character of any depth: the wonderfully ambivalent Severus Snape. They may also complain about J. K. Rowling’s own hyperbolic predictions of dying heroes, only to discover that the mourned victim is actually a penumbral elf. Some even suggest that, in the end, the wrong wizard won.
There is justice in some of this. But the books won out in the end, despite the hype, not because of it. Harry Potter was originally discovered by relatively few readers and sold by word of mouth, by recommendation, by enthusiasm. People loved the invention, loved the characters, loved the humour, loved the moral simplicity. Few fans will regret the passing of the merchandising industry. But a generation will mourn the end of the magic.