POTTERMANIA is well and truly sweeping the nation.

Like millions of fans around the world I have been eagerly awaiting the release of the eighth and final film in the series, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2.

I already have my tickets booked to see it tonight. There is a 99.9 per cent chance I will also be going to see it again tomorrow with another group of friends and possibly even a third time with another.

My excitement is such that I am not going to complain about having to spend about £30 on cinema tickets. To me Potter is worth it.

As he is to millions of fans across the world.

My “predicament” at having to see the film three times is an example of how many people have grown up with and love Harry Potter and the other characters.

Many of my friends and family members are also engrossed in the Harry Potter phenomenon and I doubt I will be the only Potter fan to see the film more than once in the cinema.

A school friend and I once even applied to be extras in one of the films (I forget which one).

But that dedication pales in comparison to the thousands of fans who camped for days ahead of the film’s London premiere – for the first time held in Trafalgar Square and in New York, such was the enormity of the event.

Excitement is not the only emotion fans will be feeling now.

Many of us, myself included (the first film came out when I was 13 or 14), have grown up with Harry and his best friends Ron and Hermione, and we’re sad to see the series end.

For those of you unaware of the plot, Harry Potter finds out he is a wizard on his 11th birthday and is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There he meets headteacher Albus Dumbledore, who becomes his mentor.

Unbeknown to Harry he is a legend in the wizarding world having defeated the dark wizard Voldemort, who tried to kill Harry when he was just a baby after killing his parents.

But Voldemort didn’t die and throughout his seven years at Hogwarts, Harry is faced with lifethreatening situations as he comes face-to-face with Voldemort, until their final battle in book seven (the final book has been split in two for the purpose of getting everything into the films.) Just as the end was an emotional time for actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, who shed a few tears during their final thank you speeches, so it was for the millions of fans finally saying goodbye to them.

I won’t lie, I got tearful when I saw the official trailer for the first time in the cinema.

I had gone to see the latest in another series, Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, when I saw it.

My boyfriend, who has never read any of the books nor seen a minute of one of the films, did not understand my excitement, but my lasting impression of that cinema trip was not Jack Sparrow but Harry Potter. For the first time in a long time, so desperate was I to share my excitement that I even updated my Facebook status.

I believe it read something along the lines of “Pirates was good, but the Harry Potter trailer was EPIC”.

Several people ‘liked’ it.

Given my reaction to a twominute trailer you could be forgiven for thinking that I have been an HP fan from the very start.

I haven’t.

When I was 11 or 12 I was looking for a book in the school library and came across the second in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

I never got past the second or third chapter.

But a year or so later, in 2001, when the first film came out, I was on a family holiday in Brixham, Devon, and we went into a little bookshop. The only thing suitable for me was the Harry Potter series. So I bought the first one. In six weeks I had read all four (at that time the other three were yet to be published).

The beauty of the series is that every book gets darker as the main characters get older, and the films are the same, which means the final one is sure to be epic. As Radcliffe himself was quoted as saying, Harry Potter is now an action hero.

Okay, he’s dealing with a lot more than most of us had to deal with at 18, but millions of fans across the world share his emotions, having grown up with Harry, Ron and Hermione just like the actors that played them.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 marks the end of the films, but as Sirius Black once said: “The ones who love us never truly leave us...”