User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-1906595-20110709032602

Harry Potter has been one of the most important parts of my life for a long time. I'd never heard of it, sad to say, until the first movie was about to come out in 2001. But while watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I fell in love with the boy wizard’s world. Quidditch, in particular, was my favorite part of that movie. Harry spitting up the Snitch was hilarious. But not just that game of Quidditch, Ron’s chess game, Hermione saving Ron from Devil’s Snare, and a letter from a school of magic were what I loved about J.K. Rowling’s world. What I loved the most was a boy with a lightning bolt scar, an invisibility cloak, a snowy owl, and a broomstick who changed my world forever. After ten years of abuse from his extended family, Harry gets a letter from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, delivered by a wonderfully friendly giant named Hagrid. And Harry is immediately a wizarding celebrity for something he doesn’t even remember: surviving the Killing Curse at the hands of Lord Voldemort as a baby, just after the deaths of his parents. On the Hogwarts Express, Harry makes two friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who would stick by his side through the year, facing Draco Malfoy, saving Harry from a bucking broomstick, and coming face-to-face with Voldemort for the first time since infancy. The most wonderful part is Harry learning what helped him survive Voldemort as a baby, his parents’ love. My favorite line was also Harry’s very last in the film, “I’m not going home. Not really.” He’d finally found a true home: Hogwarts. Petrificus totalus became my favorite spell. I loved playing Hermione with my dad and he would always freeze when I said the spell to humor me. My sister would play along too. We’d say Wingardium leviosa so much, we probably would worn the word out. But it’s Harry Potter, it never gets worn out for us! The next time I went into a Barnes and Noble bookstore, I discovered the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets book and couldn’t put it down from the first page. I even kept reading it up to when we ate dinner that night. The very year the Chamber of Secrets became a movie, I dressed up as Hermione for Halloween. And the night I went to see Chamber of Secrets in theaters, I wore my costume. I bet people probably stared. I don’t care. I was too excited for my love of Harry Potter. I then took to reading the next book, The Prisoner of Azkaban. I admit I was a little bored at first, but I got much more into it as I read on. I learned Harry had a godfather, Sirius Black, who he thought betrayed his parents, when it wasn’t true. In the end, Harry saved his godfather from the condemned fate of the Dementor’s Kiss. He finally felt like he had a true family. (Who he could use to scare the Dursleys, I might add. HAHA!) After that, I read the Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time (it was mostly just for a book report, but I also wanted to read the book and know what I’d missed in there that wasn’t in the movie). It was very different, but I still loved it anyway. And it was much better than the movie. (But poor Ron got bitten by Norbert… oof…) My favorite book when I began to read it became Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was fascinating and the most amazing book yet (I was reading it just before the fifth book came out). I loved it so much I couldn’t put it down. I would read it during classes at school, before bed every night, even in the bathtub after lights out. My mom was surprised I was so far in the book so soon that she just had to catch up. (And she still finished before me…) But I read on until the end and was terrified by Voldemort’s return just after the murder of poor Cedric Diggory. (R.I.P Cedric.) But a message from Professor Dumbledore was sent out to us all, both Hogwarts and Muggle alike, ‘stick together, be strong, and trust your friends’. For the Order of the Phoenix’s release, I wore my Hermione costume to a midnight release party. I was so excited to dress up for this, and my parents even preordered the book for me for my tenth birthday just before the book’s release. My mom finished the book in three days. It took me much longer, not sure how long, but it was a fun, sad, and angry book to read. Fun because Harry gets to become a leader for Dumbledore’s Army and teach wizards to fight against Voldemort’s forces, sad because of Sirius’s death (R.I.P. Sirius Black), and angry because of how much I hate Umbridge. But despite that, Harry learns even more about how loved he is and how much he has loved because it saves him from being possessed by Voldemort. The day The Half-Blood Prince came out, my mom and I went to get it from a local bookshop and she finished it in two days. It took me a while, but I liked this book too, up the sadness of Dumbledore’s death. That was truly devastating, but Professor Dumbledore’s memory will live on in these beautiful books forever. He said he ‘would only have truly left Hogwarts when no one there remain loyal to him’. Well, that will never happen, I can say that with absolute faith. When the final book came out, I HAD to go to the release party, I dragged my dad, mom, and sister there just for the very purpose of getting that book. I was crushed to learn when my mom beat me to finishing it, but it spurred me on to finish it quickly, and I did, all the way up to Harry’s happy ending. I read the last of my book to my father and he was so glad to see me enjoying it and loving every bit of Harry Potter left in that book. Now, four years later, and right before the final movie’s release, my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is beaten and worn from years of love (and sitting in my backpack when I took it to school), but it is a book I will carry forever out of love for its sentimental worth to me. It is truly the best of the books and my favorite forevermore. I feel privileged to have grown up in the years Harry Potter has been published and given life by J.K. Rowling. I love her books so much, I’ve idolized her and have been inspired to write my own books. My mother has shared the joy of these books with me, and I hope she and I will have this connection for the rest of our lives. She and I forged a new bond through these books and I don’t think we’ve ever been closer because of these books. Harry Potter is a truly wonderful hero. From a young boy with a just scar on his head, to the grown wizard we see him become through his six years at Hogwarts, and his seventh year spent saving the world from Voldemort, Harry Potter’s legacy will live on in this series of books for generations to come. He is truly a hero of epic status! Long live, Harry Potter!