"It was beautiful magic, wondrous to behold..."

For those who know me well, it's not a secret that I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. Although I much prefer reading the books, I also love watching the movies regularly because the visual world of Harry Potter is amazing and I always found that it's represented really well in them (with a few exceptions of course).

Actually, my only request to Jason last Christmas was to get the box set of all the Harry Potter movies so that I could watch them properly and whenever I wanted (my family has all the DVDs but they stayed at my parents). He went on and offered me the set of blu-rays with all the bonuses you could dream of (heart eyes). So from time to time, I watch them again but in random orders as my two favourites are the third and sixth (Prisoner of Askaban and the Half-Blood Prince). I know it's not the right way to do it but honestly, I'm 29 now and I do what I want, never mind if it doesn't make much sense!

The other day I was watching (for the hundredth time I guess) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and during the scene when Slughorn talks to Harry about his pet fish which was a gift from Lily, I felt inspired to recreate the transformation of the lily petal into a fish. I'm by no means an animator and my experience with gifs is not amazing, but I thought I should try and give it a go. It was also mostly to see if I could translate the idea I had in my head and I was curious to see how it would turn out.

Last Friday afternoon, I went on and started the first illustration with the lily petal just sitting on the water. Then, and with a bit of help from Jason, I slowly created the 26 illustrations that actually make the gif. I know it's not much and not ground-breaking at all, but I'm very proud of it as I very rarely work on personal projects and I was super pleased to have managed to do something just for me that I'm proud of.

The day after, I was told that my grandmother on my dad's side had passed away. She'd been ill for a very long time and turned 91 in July this year, but it was still a shock and a very hard time for me and my family. On the day of her funeral, I thought about this animation that I created just before her passing and I felt that strangely, it was quite fitting with this sad time and decided to use it on social media to mention the heart-breaking news to everyone.

It made me think about how sometimes art, and overall just creating something, has different meanings and can be seen and felt differently depending on the mindset you're in and what is happening in your life at that moment.

On Friday, I saw it as a cool animation that represent the magic of a beautiful moment, and a couple days after, I saw it as this sad but poetic tribute to a wonderful piece of magic that vanished when Lily was killed by Voldemort.

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