“Oh my, they really are growing up.”

This was my first reaction on hearing ‘Magic Works’, a tune from the soundtrack to the new Harry Potter movie, which comes out on CD in a few weeks, though a few tunes can be heard right now via the soundtrack’s official website. I have no idea who sings this song, but it sounds exactly like the sort of overwrought rock’n’roll power ballad that would have taken my own lovestruck adolescent emotions and pumped them up well beyond any reason or logic, back when I was in high school.

My first reaction, on hearing these pop songs sprinkled among the Patrick Doyle sound clips — this is the first Harry Potter film not to be scored by John Williams, incidentally — was to be dismissive, and to complain that they were intruding on the more purely classical feel of the earlier soundtracks. It didn’t help that ‘Do the Hippogriff’ sounds like a rip-off of Billy Idol’s ‘Rebel Yell’. But when I heard this ballad, it suddenly hit me that this music is perfect for this stage in Harry’s life. He is 14 years old now, after all. Like it or not, this is pretty much the sort of thing he’d be listening to.

And, having seen the photos and trailer clips of Harry and Ron and Hermione dressed up for the school ball, I can only imagine how floored I am going to be when I hear this music playing over those images. Heck, I already get verklempt just pondering the fact that Harry’s parents didn’t live to see this part of his life.

Yikes. I wonder how the song would feel to me if I didn’t have those images to associate it with.

Sigh. Harry and the rest aren’t 11 years old any more. (Actually, apart from the first film’s prologue, set during Harry’s infancy, I believe he was only 10 when we first saw him, a few days before his 11th birthday.) The children, they grow so fast.