alexiscartwheel | OotP Anniversary (Reply)

author_by_night pointed out that today is a HP fandom milestone: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was published, and asked where we were that day.

I was at work. At the time I was a page at the local public library, and I worked every Saturday from 9am-1pm. All morning I watched people come in to pick up their reserved copies of the book, but I had to wait until my shift ended to go home and read. I had placed a copy on reserve for myself back in January, the very first day the title was entered into the library catalog, so I had a number in the mid-300s. I knew it would come in the first day, but by around noon I was starting to worry that it might not get checked in before I went home. (Delivery boxes aren't unloaded in any specific order, after all.)

As for fandom, I started reading HP shortly after the US publication of Prisoner of Azkaban, I got my library copy of Goblet of Fire on the release day, and discovered online fandom sometime thereafter. By June 21, 2003 I was a regular poster at FA and had just decided to give up lurking and start posting at the Sugar Quill. Wasn't the final chapter of After the End posted the night before? I had been following it for some time, so reading the ending gave me something fun to do while I waited for the book!

As an Harry/Ginny shipper I was in a very unpopular minority. Fandom at large seemed to prefer Harry/Hermione and Ginny/Draco. (Although earlier in the series I thought Harry/Hermione was plausible, I didn't actively ship them. And then there was Goblet of Fire with it's Ron/Hermione goodness. At this point, my non-HP friends think I'm totally cracked.) Anyway, I remember one of my biggest hopes for the book was that Ginny would feature more prominently, and JKR definitely delivered! I can't really remember any other specific expectations, though I'm sure I had some.

Just for the lulz, I found my reaction to OotP from the Quill forums.

I read Order of the Phoenix exactly the same way I read Goblet of Fire: straight through, in about nine hours. My friends kept calling me and interrupting. I guess they just didn't believe me that I could become that absorbed in a book. But I was. And maybe it sounds cheesy, but I couldn't put it down. I've started reading it again and I'm now on about page 150. I'm trying to go a bit slower to make up for my frenzied pace the first time.

There were two things that popped out at me the most as being different about OotP:
1. It was darker. I mean, I knew that the end of GoF was a big turning point and that OotP was going to be darker, but I don't think it really sunk in until I started reading. Even when Harry was having fun being with his friends or playing Quidditch, there was constantly a dark shadow hanging over everything. Nothing was as straightforward as it was before, even things like Fred & George's jokes. When they turned them against Umbridge, it was funny, but it wasn't just the normal 'innocent' joking.

2. Character Developement. Ginny. Harry. Fred & George. Sirius. James. McGonagall. Snape. Dumbledore. It seems like everyone had their moment somewhere in the book, and a lot of it was very surprising. With some characters, I've had my views on them reinforced and I love them even more, but for some my previous opinions about them have been called into question.

Overall, I thought OotP was a great book. It was very different than it's predecessors, but I still loved it.

Ah, nostalgia. Harry Potter fandom was just too much fun! :D