It all ends as Generation Hogwarts bids Harry Potter goodbye

Jul 14, 2011, 5:05 GMT

Sydney - The final Harry Potter film set a national record Wednesday by flashing onto 748 cinema screens across Australia as Generation Hogwarts lined up to bid farewell to Harry, Hermione and Ron.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 concludes a magical run for British author J K Rowling, whose seven weighty books have inspired eight feature films.

The grand finale also spelt an end to childhood for some youngsters.

Agatha Lossy, now 17, recalled tucking into her first Potter tale a decade ago. 'Ever since then I've been reading them religiously and watching the movies too,' the Sydney schoolgirl said. 'I'm going to make my kids read Harry Potter and watch the movies for sure.'

Even the not-so-young were keen to get into the spirit by dressing up for the bittersweet occasion.

'Our house is all decorated for Harry Potter week,' Helen Russett, 49, told national broadcaster ABC. 'For me, having started reading the books 10 years ago and seeing all the movies with my daughters - and we've enjoyed them as a family - it's just really exciting for the last instalment.'

Russett, and 14-year-old daughter Pauline, were in the green and gold garb of Gryffindor House to attend the Potter swansong.

Writing in Sydney's the Daily Telegraph, cinema critic Leigh Paatsch declared Hallows 2 a 'fitting end to a decade that had the whole world believing in magic.'

He described it as a 'great action movie' which rounds out a stupendous series that set the highest hurdles for book sales and box-office receipts.

'It is only when you take a step back and look at the movie series as a whole that you realise how well the master plan of the Potter producers has been implemented,' he wrote.