User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4147833-20110714192554

(Please take the time to read this. It was written from the heart.) Harry Potter to me was something more than a big part of my childhood growing up. I remember cold winter nights with my uncle, listening to him read to me all the adventures that Harry had until I could fight sleep no longer, and then I would drift off into dreams about Hogwarts and magic, making potions, and going on adventures into the forest with Hagrid. For Christmas, all my presents would be Harry Potter themed, from a Lego castle to a potion maker. My uncle loved the movies (almost) as much as the books, so special trips to the best theater we could find was always a must when it came to Harry Potter. Those few years for me were magical, and I won't ever forget them.

It was around the time that the third movie was going to come out, that something happened to take away the magic in my life. My uncle passed away before the movie even got to the theater. At the time, I was a little girl, and I didn't understand the reasons, or the excuses adults gave me. All I knew was, a piece of my world and the magic in my life that I loved so much, was gone. For a long time, I refused to even pick up a Harry Potter book. But around two years ago, I opened a box of my uncle's old things, and there they were... all of the books right there for me to read. So, I started to. I bought the movies, read some, and the hurt that I'd always kept locked away began to fade. The person I loved most in my life was gone, but he still lived through the Harry Potter books and movies. Every moral that they taught me, felt like they were coming from him. The magic, and the love that I used to feel when he read to me, and we saw the movies together came back into my life.

So, what does Harry Potter mean to me? It means that my uncle never really left my life; he's always been there, in the pages of the books that brought him so much happiness.