My sisters and I met up last night at Greenbelt 3 to watch an 11pm screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Since we arrived there right after work, we had over 3 hours to wile away. After wasting enough time eating dinner, hitting up Timezone, and basically running out of things to do, we finally headed towards the cinemas.

I don't want to go into a full-blown movie review -- not just because I don't have the time, but also because my inability to detach myself emotionally from the entire franchise would do the film a great disservice. Let's just say I think they did the best they could with the what they had, limitations and all. I'll tell you this much, though: for almost half the time I spent in the theater, it seemed as though my tears were inexhaustible.

I'll just do a rundown of the notable things in the film.

• The Nazi-esque marching of the Hogwarts students sent chills through me.
• Not even 5 minutes into the movie, tears threatened to pour as we see the very first shot of Snape.
• Helena Bonham-Carter as Hermione playing Bellatrix was brilliant.
• Ron in his disguise during the Gringotts scene... UNF.
• The moment all Romione fans have been waiting for was a bit of a letdown.
• Minerva McGonagall is a force to be reckoned with. I literally clapped after the whole Piertotum Locomotor scene. "I've always wanted to use that spell."
• Ron's attempt at Parseltongue, hilarious!
• The scene in the Room of Requirements, Crabbe is now black, and they killed off the wrong person.
• The Malfoy family -- they win my heart.
• Lavender Brown, apparently, dies. Fenrir Greyback is to blame.
• Alan Rickman deserves all the awards. ALL. THE. AWARDS.
• From the moment we see Voldemort with Snape (you know which scene I'm referring to) and all throughout The Prince's Tale, I was a puddle of tears. 
• Fred's scene was truly lacking, yet I cried so hard.
• Neville's bad-ass moment could have been more bad ass.
• Molly Weasley's epic scene did not turn out to be quite so epic.
• I would've liked to see Voldemort witness the deaths of Nagini and Bellatrix.
• It wasn't perfect, but it was a fantastic way to end the series.

And thus, it has ended...

But then again, not really. Years from now, I will still re-read and re-watch the books and the films. We'll still have Hogwarts in our minds, in our hearts. I will definitely read the books to my future kids every night before they're tucked into bed. And when they're old enough, they can read the latter scarier books on their own. Harry Potter is a classic and will be around forever, no doubt about that.

No one could've said it better than Jo Rowling herself, "Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home."