User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4168845-20110719091455

I remember when I first finished Harry Potter and the Socerer’s Stone in the second grade. I had only twenty pages to finish before school the next morning, so I woke up early and quickly got my things together and continued to read. I remember hearing my father call to me, that the bus was here, waiting at the end of the drive way. I sat there a few more moments and finished the last sentence: “I’m going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer” and hurried off out the door.

I remember my mother walking into the family room, taking The Goblet of Fire out of a Target bag filled with razors and shampoo and bars of soap, completely unaware of the importance the pages held to me. I remember all the nights where me and my father would sit in my old bed, later in my new bed when I moved, and I would read the first twenty pages, he the second, so and and so forth. I remember all the times he would pronounce Hermione wrong. I remember watching him read with my sister this way when I started reading on my own. I remember my father asking me and her trivia questions about the books, I remember her calling me when I was out with friends to update me on what she had read or ask me questions about how Nearly Headless Nick lost his head or what exactly Herbology was.

I remember reading that Sirius had died, and having to read it over and over because I just could not believe he could just fall behind the veil and be gone forever. I remember Dumbledore dying and doing the same. At the time, unable to fathom death, unable to fathom loss or sorrow.

I remember my first time really getting in trouble with my parents, and the last thing I was allowed to do was to go to the midnight release of The Deathly Hallows. I remember crying against the wall in my bathroom thinking Harry was going to die. I remember looking back at the book now and seeing the pages stained with my mascara. I remember all the other times I have cried there. I remember re-reading that last chapter, over and over, telling myself that that was the reason I was crying.

Many do not understand the power of Harry Potter. The allure of magic, of make believe, of these characters I have come to know so well. And to those people, I feel sorry, for you have never truly known the power of a story. I believe that a good story has the power to heal, to change. Growing up, I was very lonely, lonely in my home, in my school, lonely among others in the isolation I created. Harry Potter is the longest friend I have ever had. The Harry Potter series is not about the narrative itself, but the memories that were created around it. I can pick up my copy of The Socercer’s Stone, and it still feels the same way in my hand as it did in the second grade. I am 20 years old and in college and before this final movie, my dad started sending me the emails I had written to J.K. Rowling between the third and ninth grade, thanking her for this great escape, thanking her for making me want to become a writer. I am currently pursuing an English major and I really have no one to thank but the author herself, this incredible woman who has built a comfortable, endlessly imaginative world for me in her stories. I truly cannot believe that the story must end, but, in fact, all stories do. The end of this journey only prepares me for the end of my own, making me want to fill it up with such an adventurous and fulfilling life as that of Harry Potter.

***

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?” “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”