Hello, everyone! Your Fairy God-Librarian here, and I want to talk about a very personal story: the origin of my life-long love for Harry Potter.
Do you remember where you were when humans first landed on the moon? When Facebook was launched? When Kanye West stole the mic from Taylor Swift and declared that it was actually Beyonce who had the best album of all time? I don’t! But one thing I do remember is where and how I got hooked on a children’s series that would eternally be a part of me.
If you’re like me and you love the HPIC (which in this case means the “Harry Potter In Charge” instead of…you know, *cough!* Head Bitch In Charge), then you fell in love with the books as a child and never grew out of them. Once I read them, it became like an addiction and now that all 7 books are out, it has become a habit of mine to read the series at least twice a year.
I can’t recall the number of times I’ve actually read the books. Or been asked how many times I’ve read the books. But one thing is obvious: Harry Potter is my life.
Harry Potter paraphernalia is on my T-shirts, my coffee mugs, my wall art, half my Watch Later list on Youtube as ASMR videos, my hats, scarves, sweaters, and coats. EA Games Harry Potter on PlayStation 2 were the only video games I ever bothered to play and now as an adult, the only phone game I’m obsessed with is Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. I visit Mugglenet.com daily, and there’s one section of my bookshelf where only HP-related books are allowed. As a preteen, I used to cut out pictures from magazines and make HP-themed collages on black paper to hang on my wall. My mom even had a brief tradition of buying a new HP-themed Christmas ornament, in honor of her favorite child, to hang on the tree every year. I went to the 6th and 7th midnight book releases and dressed as a Hufflepuff student each time. I was there as soon as the movies were in theaters. Just as important, visiting Harry Potter sites while in England and Scotland in 2019 was on my to-do list. As was visiting Harry Potter World Universal Studios in 2018. Leaky Con is next. Hell, I almost named my dog after a Harry Potter character but decided on a Jane Austen character instead.
The inspiration for this post came to me after reading the fascinating book called Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli, the webmistresses of the Harry Potter fan site, The Leaky Cauldron. I had gone to Second and Charles, a fabulous used bookstore, and like you do, I perused through their (terribly tiny) Harry Potter section. Her book caught my eye because it was the only book on the shelf that wasn’t completely unnecessary. It details how this young woman discovered Harry Potter a few years after the release of the first book, how she stumbled upon a job working on The Leaky Cauldron fan site and used this to further her career into journalism, and all things Harry Potter phenomena, including the opportunities she won to interview J.K. Rowling herself (The Queen).
Unlike Ms. Anelli, I was J.K. Rowling’s target audience when I first started reading the books and was able to continue that love as I grew up. Although Ms. Anelli was an adult when she began her journey, the brilliance of the books is proof that even though they are meant for children, adults are just as susceptible to them as well. My only problem with her book is that it was published in 2008, a year after the 7th book was released. I would have loved to read her thoughts on all of the other crazy HP stuff that’s happened since then (like Pottermore, J.K. Rowling becoming the first female billionaire by writing books and then becoming the first person to lose that status by donating so much to charity, the launch of Lumos, all of the books she’s written post-HP, the 2012 World Olympics in London having two giant Harry Potter blowups, the Fantastic Beasts movies, J.K.’s controversial transphobia tweets, etc.).
But how exactly and when did all of this start for your Fairy God-Librarian here?
Well, the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone by J.K. Rowling, was published in the UK in 1997 and reached the US a year later in 1998. Being born in late ’92, I was almost six years old when they were published and still, as of then, unable to read. Fall of ’98 would have been when I started kindergarten. It wasn’t until the end of ’99 and the beginning of 2000 that I really got hooked on phonics. Literally. By then, book two and three were already out and book four was fast approaching. It would hit shelves in August 2000. Let’s fast forward to November ’01, and the first Harry Potter movie had just come out. Second grade was going great. I had just turned nine and a friend of mine was begging to go see the movie with me. She had fallen in love with all four of the then-released books and wanted me to fangirl with her too. But I wasn’t having it. Harry Potter didn’t seem interesting to me. I had other massively long books to read. The movie didn’t seem to deserve all the hype I had been hearing about for weeks at that point. But she begged. OH how she begged. She called my house, talked to my mom, convinced her to talk to me. I finally agreed to go see the movie with her when my mom offered to take the two of us. Wouldn’t that be fun, Lacie? my mom had asked. Sure, mom. Ok. She’s my friend, I’ll go see this stupid movie.
When it was over and we were in the backseat of my mom’s car heading home, my friend couldn’t stop talking about how awesome the movie was. My mom looked at me from her rearview mirror and asked me how I thought. I was stunned. I hadn’t said a word from the moment the lights dimmed in the theater. When she asked me that, I turned to my friend and blurted out, “That was the best movie I’ve ever seen.” My friend was thrilled.
And that was When Harry Met Lacie. I had always been a voracious reader from the first time a book was put into my hands, but this was something else. When Christmas arrived a month later, the beautiful hardback Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was the first gift I opened. Obviously, my parents had mistakenly bought me the second instead of the first, but I read it regardless. When they corrected their mistake and got me the first, in hardback as well, I read that too, then went back and reread the second before begging for the third and fourth in the series. Which they quickly acquiesced. Thank goodness for generous parents, am I right? Especially when your nine-year-old child’s most desperate desire is a book.
Many years later, I found a photograph my mom had taken of me reading the hardback Chamber of Secrets book that fateful Christmas morning in 2001. Though not exactly a 90s rom-com, my life has forever been intertwined with the genius that is the queen of literature.
Thanks for listening. Have a very Harry Christmas.
Love,
Lacie 😊
