User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4165455-20110719044918

I started reading the Harry Potter series when I was in kindergarten and from then on, Harry Potter allowed me a place where I could escape. My childhood wasn't always very happy but when I was reading the Harry Potter books, I could pretend to be someone else in a fantastical world of witches and wizards and fairies and all things magical. I could get away from whatever was going on and become entranced in this fantastical realm. It gave me an outlet for all my pent up tension and anxiety and it let me feel free and unburdened by a less that desirable home life and crippling shyness that left me with very few friends. These books gave me a safe haven and someone I could relate to: Harry. Obviously, I didn't have a sadistic dark wizard hung up on killing me but I could relate to having a tough home life and I knew how lonely school could be when you had few or no friends and therefore feeling like an outsider. For Harry, it was his magic that spurned his miserable but for me, it was my higher than normal scholastic skills (a bit like Hermione before the troll incident).

I guess if I had to sum it all up, I would say that Harry Potter meant I had an escape, a way to make myself happy when times were not and that meant everything to me.