Still Waiting On My Hogwarts Letter

I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on a flight and refused to return to the muggle world.

I was the same age as Harry, Ron, and Hermione when the first book came out. With every page, I was transported to this beautiful school. I was bullied by Professor Snape, received guidance from Professor McGonagall, quarreled with Draco, and won my first quidditch match. I faced a three-headed dog, rode a broom amongst animated keys, won a life-size game of Wizard’s Chest, and came face-to-face with the world’s most feared wizard. I experienced friendship, cast spells, and felt the pang of sadness when the year was over. At the age of eleven, this was the most fantastic adventure I had taken, and I repeated this adventure repeatedly. As the following years unfurled, the experience continued to seduce me and holds me completely smitten to this day.

And I am not alone.

My fellow Potterheads all have various reasons why this series spoke to them. Like myself, many of the first readers were joining Harry for his first year at Hogwarts. We fell in love with a world just beyond what we know: a world where we were taught magic and were filled with creatures beyond our imagination. We cried over our losses: Fred, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and Dobby are just a few. And it takes one word to set us off: Umbridge.

Well into my thirties, this fandom continues to be a part of my everyday life. My husband and I have long conversations about why we would sort characters from other fandoms into certain Hogwarts houses. My childhood best friend and I have three generations of characters built into Harry Potter fanfiction. I have a dog named after Luna Lovegood and have matching coats with my husband to represent our houses (I’m a Gryffindor, and he’s a Ravenclaw). I determined my daughter was headed for Slytherin house at the age of one when I watched her mull over how to get out of her crib and succeed multiple times, despite my best efforts to remove anything that might aid her. At almost seven, she is beginning to recognize the characters in our various fan paraphernalia, and I am waiting for the tearful day where she will want to binge the series with me and her dad. To say we’re obsessed is an understatement.

For me, I will not say Harry Potter is the best fandom. There are many fandoms out there and many that I enjoy regularly. But Harry Potter is the only one that has stayed with me as hard. I grew up watching Star Wars with my grandfather. I love it to this day, but I don’t find myself researching further into the fandom. I find the world fascinating, and I absolutely love the theories behind characters and even the Force. But my knowledge is limited. I’m also a lover of Batman, especially the villains (I’ve loved Poison Ivy way before Uma Thurman portrayed her in the 90s). Thanks to my husband, I know way more than I used to and have a pretty decent selection of comics, but I tire of the DC universe after a while. Harry Potter, on the other hand, I can talk for hours or even days about it. It fills me with a sense of comfort and lets me relive the wonderful childhood memories I had associated with this world. It takes me back to roleplays with my best friends, developing characters for fanfiction, or even the summer I binge-watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets every day while eating crepes (I was taking French learned the recipe). Despite how insane the world is, how old I get, or even how betrayed many have felt at the author’s comments regarding particular communities, Harry Potter was and continues to be a wonderful escape from the mundane.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to waiting for my Hogwarts letter.