Molly Weasley review – an elegant footnote in the magical Harry Potter canon

They were by turns uplifting, tragic and sexy. But for all the powerful emotions this stirring ode to the little girl who wears her heart on her slender foot has provoked, the modest blast of teenage nostalgia that it evokes also might be a little too much of a good thing. For writer Billy Darling, whose original ode to Molly Weasley, Steerforth, is one of the 25 songs showcased on his two-CD set Just Like That: The Shoe Must Go On, revisiting that world in which Harry Potter (Jude Law) found his feet was a chance to finish what he started. But the decision to focus on the famous seventh song, which Harry and Ginny (Emma Watson) perform with Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) at a homecoming dance, ultimately felt less like a reprise than a retrospective: a lazy, 60s 60s flashback. The beautiful tune, with its majestic waltz that suggests a lost world of pure enchantment, was always more memorable for the look of pure relief it gave viewers when Harry tackled the beastie while keeping hold of his wand; the lyrics to the song are less memorable. Songs such as “Shoes” (the little girl says she’ll wear whatever it takes to save her favourite, dancing boy’s life) or “Gorillaz [Boxes]” (Gorillaz sprout those head-fuzzy heads and say that if you were to see any kids in school who were getting too wild for their own good, they were, “less thin, less cheeky, less selling out, less like you”) felt somewhat stagy. But the very least you could say for Just Like That is that Billy has moved on.