User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4166428-20110718224055

To me Harry Potter is my childhood, I know that it has affected thousands of other children's lives as well, but here is why I am different, At first I didn't read the books, because I was so young but they were read to me by my older sister Jennifer, who is also a huge Harry Potter fanatic and pushed me and my other sister to read them as well. So I did read them and I loved them and they touched my heart in ways that I could never explain, they changed who I was, they made me who I am. And I am so glad they did, because these books and this story and these movies made me a better person. I would watch the movies everyday because I loved them so much, Harry and Ron and Hermione, they were my heroes, I looked up to them like most kids look up to their older siblings, I fell in love with them, all of them, Neville, McGonagall, Luna, Hargid. They all represented people that I wanted to become, A Gryffindor. A brave and caring and just all around strong person. Because of Joanne Rowling, a woman who is the person that I look up to the most in this world. She is like my second mother, the one taught me everything I needed to know. My family was never "well-off" we were always just the middle class but due to this recession we only got worse and worse with money, and even though I was only 13 when things started going downhill it still affected our whole family, and especially to me, I became depressed, I lost my friends I lost everything that made me, me. Except Harry Potter. No matter how bad things got I always had Harry there to catch my fall, I always knew that if I was having a bad day I could just go in my room, shut my door and return to Hogwarts, my home away from home. I at first it would just be to shut everything else out but soon as I kept reading and watching I realized that my key to becoming happy again, my key to living again was Harry and the morals that this story incorporates. I am a Gryffindor, I am brave I am strong and I believe that if I try my best I can achieve whatever I set my mind to. And it's all thanks to Harry and his friends. So to me Harry represents love. He means that even if you aren't the smartest, or the funniest, or the most popular it doesn't matter. If you believe in yourself then you can do whatever you want to do. And I only have Joanne Kathleen Rowling to thank for that, and I do everyday. Because even though the movies are over and there are no more books Harry Potter that what his story means to me will live on forever in my heart