User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4182671-20110721175943

Simply put, Harry Potter means imagination. I was seven when my sister took me to see the first film and I doubted that I would like it, but I was dead wrong. I sat in the theatre, enraptured, and from that point on I was absorbed into the wizarding world, from a mini Hogwarts play set at Christmas to HP birthday cakes, but nothing was as great as the books. Initially, my mother didn't think I would read the book, but she was as wrong as I had been. Those books broadened my imagination and, at that age, my reading abilities. Growing up reading the series, I needed some medium for my imagination, so I began writing when I was eight and I can honestly say that if I hadn't bothered to pick up those books as I child I wouldn't be where I am now. I'm only seventeen, but I have experienced a beautiful decade exploring a different world in books and film, I am majoring in creative writing at my school, more importantly building my own worlds and creating my own memorable characters, and remembering the values and lessons that I learned in ink and from Rowling’s own story. The books didn’t connect me to other people that loved the series, they helped me find my passion, inadvertently, without which I would be lost. I may not be the next JK, I may never see my name in print, but if I looked into the Mirror of Erised that’s not even what I would see. I’d see myself sitting next to a stack of six books, my nose already buried in the first.