User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4160261-20110717160605

I remember the night I first fell in love with Harry Potter. I was in third grade, and my mother was working late at Carbo’s Cafe Grand Ballroom in Atlanta, Georgia. Whenever she would work late, I’d wait for her in one of the rooms since they were empty and silent. That particular night, after finishing with my school work, I pulled from my bag a small paperback book I had picked up at the library earlier that day. I had been browsing through the shelves, and the book had just appealed to me. I knew nothing about it, other than it’s title: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I started reading, and was pulled in from the start. There, in that dimly lit ballroom, I fell in love. I finished it that night, not having put it down from the moment I started until I turned over the last page. I read it again the next day. I was riveted. I have many other fond memories after that first night. Such as the day the preview for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone first appeared on my television screen. I nearly peed myself with excitement. I watched the preview over and over and talked to my friends at school about every single detail. (We just couldn’t get over how the chocolate frog lunged itself from the window of the train like that). And then the happy day that my mother said she would take me to see the midnight premier. I honestly think that in my time spent with my mother, that was the greatest thing she ever did for me. I stood in line with her and my grandmother for hours, just to be one of the first into the theater when the time arrived. Sitting in that seat, waiting for the movie to begin, I was more excited than I had been at any previous point in my childhood. And I don’t care if that sounds odd. With her book, J.K Rowling brought me joy. Something that very seldomly crossed my path. From the first moment I opened that book the years became a constant waiting game filled with anticipation and joy. I eagerly await every new installment. And when I would get my hands on the next book I treated it as a man dying of thirst would if he were to stumble upon a pool of clear cool water. Like it was a priceless treasure. It wasn’t just because it was a wonderful book, which it clearly was. It was because when I had nothing, it gave me a doorway to a world that I could enter into through the pathways of my mind. I was a very imaginative child, and through my imagination I roamed the halls of Hogwarts, trembled in fear as I ventured through the Forbidden Forest, feasted in the Great Hall. I even remember foolishly thinking that if I hoped and prayed and crossed my fingers that upon my eleventh birthday I would discover my acceptance letter to Hogwarts. (Not going to lie, a small part of me was devastated when I opened the mailbox and all that was there was mail for my grandmother.) I knew that it wouldn’t arrive, but what harm is there in a child’s hope ? People say to me, you only like Harry Potter because everyone likes Harry Potter. But for me, HP shaped my childhood. It brought me joy and excitement. It gave me escape. Even now I long foolishly for the magical world birthed from Rowling’s mind, and I’m a year from 20. I have loved Harry Potter since I was eight years old. I’ve experienced rage when they messed up one of the books with a bad movie rendition (*cough*Half-Blood Prince*cough*). I will forever be proud to be a member of the Harry Potter generation. When I am an old woman, I’ll still talk to my grandchildren about the book that changed my life. I’ll admit, without shame, that I wept over the deaths of Sirius, Dumbledore, Hedwig, Fred, Dobby, Lupin, and Tonks. For when they died I felt great loss, not for a character of fiction, but for a great friend that had journeyed with me through my childhood. To the rest of the HP generation I ask only this. Don’t treat this series as something that you alone have the rights to. When someone expresses a new love for the Harry Potter series, don’t judge them for wanting to be ‘hip’ or ‘trendy’. Be proud, and happy, that a book that touched our lives so magically has reached the heart of another. These books are one of the greatest treasure of our generation, but it is a treasure that deserves to be shared with every willing mind, be they young or old. Don’t lose heart. For though our journey with Harry has reached it’s end, it will never be over. We will always have our memories and the words bound within the pages of those novels. For us, and for anyone eager to embark, the journey may always begin again with the simple turn of a page. Thank you Joanne ”Jo” Rowling, for my childhood and for the childhoods of so many others.<3 And a thousand thanks to the cast of the HP films, for putting a face to the magic. Each of you will forever have my appreciation