This boy’s story

“It’s like my childhood is ending all over again!” exclaimed my daughter, who is all of 25 years and should have bade goodbye to childish things long ago.

But then Harry Potter was – and is – no ordinary “thing.” True, he was created in the mind of author J.K. Rowling as a boy wizard appealing mainly to the juvenile market. But as the books progressed and, more importantly, as Harry himself evolved into a teenager, the franchise developed a more complicated arc. It began to reflect the more complex workings of the adolescent brain, the more complicated social relationships teens must negotiate, and yes the more annoying traits of young people challenging adult authority and doubting moral certainties. The books also began to explore darker themes revolving around the clash between the forces of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and the champions of white magic standing behind Harry, the only wizard to survive a full-on attack by “he who must not be named.”

And so with the showing of the final Harry Potter movie, the second installment based on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the last of the Harry Potter books, we bade goodbye to the “boy who lived” and to the world that sprang up around him. True, there is a “Harry Potter World” theme park in Florida, and while most reviews approve of its verisimilitude to locales like Hogwarts, Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, in our minds and hearts we know that the story of Harry and Friends has come to an end, barring the more earnest efforts of fan fiction writers.

That Harry’s own childhood and adolescence have reached a conclusion was made crystal clear by Rowling at the close of “Deathly Hallows.” We see Harry and Ginney walking down King’s Crossing station with their children, seeing off their first-born, Albus Severus Potter, as he makes his first trip to Hogwarts and to joining the wizarding world. There is no turning back for Harry then, he is a certified adult.

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I do feel a slight tug on the heart when clips from the early Harry Potter movies, especially the first one, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” are shown on TV. Here, Daniel Radcliffe looks positively angelic, his glasses framing huge innocent eyes free of guile and fear.

I was won over by Harry’s “back story,” how he lost his parents in a fatal encounter with Voldemort, and his continuing torture at the hands of his aunt and uncle back in the world of “Muggles,” what ordinary folk are called in the books. But I also loved the way he found a new family: his rescuer and guardian Hagrid, the groundskeeper at Hogwarts, Hogswart headmaster Dumbledore and the other professors, his godfather Sirius Black, the Weasley family and best friends Ron and Hermione.

The reader could take the entire franchise as the serial biography of an extraordinary boy wizard, or an exploration of a fascinating world with fully imagined mythology, history, geography, social mores and even sports. Others might want to go down further layers of meaning, from the power of parental love to the nuances of human nature and vulnerability. Whatever, we are grateful for having been invited into the world of Harry Potter, whose own struggles toward identity and self-hood mirror those that each of us Muggles had to endure, softened by the passage of time, and given the gilt edge of fantasy by this boy’s story.

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Some 1,000 pro-RH women and men marched from UST to Mendiola last Friday as part of the “Purple Ribbon March for RH,” meant, said organizers, as “a send-off to President Aquino on his 2011 State of the Nation Address.”

The march and gathering were organized by the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN), a coalition of 44 NGOs advocating the passage of the Reproductive Health bill.

“PNOY, Thanks for your support, Pass the RH Bill now!” and “PNOY, clean up the corrupt: Support the Pro-poor RH Bill” read some placards amid what organizers described as “festive and raucous chanting of young and old RH marchers of NGOs, poor communities, academics, professionals, health workers, faith groups, some of them in costumes, dancing to the thunderous beat of drums.”

Upon reaching Mendiola, the marchers delivered a letter, read by Judy Miranda of Partido Manggagawa and addressed to P-Noy, urging the President to be “even more aggressive in goading his political allies to ensure the passage of the RH bill by Congress.” The letter was received by a representative of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) who promised to deliver the letter to the President.

Proposed in 2001, the RH bill continues to be debated in the House while floor debates are to start in the Senate. Dr. Junice Melgar, executive director of Likhaan and secretary general of RHAN, sought to sum up the toll on the lives of women and children in the nine years that the RH bill has been pending: 40,000 mothers dead from childbirth and pregnancy complications; 70,000 babies dying before they reached their first year; over 4 million unsafe abortions; and “countless uninformed youth who had to stop schooling due to unintended pregnancies.”

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Still on the RH bill, it was apparently part of the “quid pro quo” demanded by Catholic bishops, some of whom were implicated in the recent scandal over vehicles donated by the PCSO, from then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The vehicles and other accommodations for the bishops are commonly seen as in exchange for the prelates’ silence and tacit support. But apart from the juicy enticements, it seems that GMA’s instructions to congressional leaders to “dribble the ball” on the RH bill in the 14th Congress was part of the deal. Women and babies were sacrificed in exchange for utility vehicles.