Dear Mr. Potter

Dear Mr. Potter

You and your books were not my first love. A great and passionate love, a long-lasting and pure love, yes, but not in any way my first. Because when it comes to books and universes and imaginary worlds, I fall in love rather easily. I've always known the power of a captivating, well told story, the rush of losing oneself in another world for a minute, an hour, a lifetime.

My first love was Little House on the Prairie. There's no contesting how I wore my home-made sunbonnet around the house on a daily basis, and that blue goodwill dress I thought resembled the one Laura wore on the cover of Plum Creek. I read and reread the series until the pages came away from the spines, and dreamed of covered wagons and checkered tablecloths and patchwork quilts.

Then it was Narnia, and then Elfquest, and then a string of anime and manga from Pokemon to Fushigi Yuugi to Naruto. You can trace the trail of my devotion through the stacks of handwritten fanfiction I've boxed up in my parent's attic.

Then, when I was about 12 years old, my aunt gave my brother Sorcerer's Stone for Christmas. It sat unread on his shelf for about six months, until the long hot summer months drove us, as usual, back to our books. I found it, read it in two days, and loved it. Then I found out that there were two more. I told my mom that I needed, urgently, to go to the bookstore. Delighted in my literary devotion, she took me that night, and I spent hard-saved allowance money on the two sequels. I stayed up late under my covers with a flashlight devouring them.

My love was strong, and over the next year and a half, my brothers and I read the covers off of those three books. Total, I have probably read each of them over 50 times over the years, and more than half of those times were in that first year, before Goblet of Fire came out. When it did, my brothers and I pooled our money to buy it, and then promptly got into a fistfight over who would get to read it first.

This is where it all changed. With the release of Goblet of Fire, people all over the world suddenly felt the way I did about every imaginary world I had so far happened across. Suddenly, I could talk to my friends about imagining what house we would each be in, and make lists of spells and recommend fanfiction to one another. Finally, after years of sharing my love with only one or two close friends or my family, millions of people I had never met knew what it was like to dream about getting a Hogwarts Letter, about making the Quidditch Team, and fighting Death Eaters side by side with Harry and Hermione and Ron.

It could have faded and relapsed with the release of each book, of course, but the summer before ninth grade, my best friend sent me a link to what she thought was just another online sorting quiz, but actually ended up being Virtual Hogwarts. We made up fake names and filled out he sheet as if it was us going to be sorted, and were disgruntled to find ourselves in different houses--me in Gryffindor, she in Hufflepuff. But then we started playing, and that changed everything.

Virtual Hogwarts was a validation of my earliest prairie-filled dreams. A mix of fanfiction and friendship and adventure, I delved more into the Potterverse than I ever had into anything else. To this day, my encyclopedic knowledge of HP is legendary among my friends and family.

The site and the experience grew with me through all of my high school years, on to college, and almost all the way up until my wedding, when I finally gave it up. I cried like a baby when I sent in my resignation, and I still tear up sometimes when I think about how much I miss it. In those dark hours, I reread GoF or DH and then write more stories about my beloved character--my alternate personality, who lived in the HP universe.

One line that they nailed in the recent movie struck me as a summation of all the time I've spent dreaming of other, nonexistent worlds: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

I have moved on. I have grown up. But I've never grown out of my love for you, Mr. Potter. I married man who understands what he calls my "nerdy obsessions," indulges them happily, and has a few odd ones of his own to add to the mix.

It's not over, Mr. Potter.Though the series is done, the movies are complete, and I've left VH for good, I still love you with a fierce love. You changed the course of my life, helped me to realize my talents and my weaknesses, and I'll never forget that.  I'll reread all your books every year or so and share your stories with my children. Your legacy will live on in my heart, in writing, and in the next generation.

Love,
Angela L., 24, Gryffindor, Texas