“It’s Real For Us.”

Posted by Manda(rific) on November 18, 2010 in Assorted Ramblings, Ramble | 3 comments

Nine years (and a few weeks) ago I was baffled by the idea that my favorite book was going to become a movie. That had never happened before – this book that I had been obsessing over for weeks, and had learned to role play because of, was going to come to life.

Another year I remember standing outside a movie theater with two of my best friends having our picture taken by my mom. I have no idea what happened to those pictures (the internet doesn’t want to fess up) – but I was wearing a cloak my mom had made, another girl had an old graduation robe. We had sticks and chopsticks as wands and Hogwarts badges pinned to our chests that we had made ourselves and laminated and hot glued to safety pins. We had waited weeks for that day.

Years passed. More movies. More books. I remember rushing home from Busch Gardens the day the last book came out so that we could be the first people in line to get our books. My best friend at the time got the first copy of Deathly Hallows that the bookstore sold. I got the second.

Slytherin ties, school robes, knee high socks gave way to an elaborate Bellatrix costume that my mother painstakingly tied me into not once, but twice in a several week period so that I could attend the midnight release of both the book and the movie in costume. That gave way to my glamorous howler costume I’ll be wearing tonight – perhaps with some alterations to survive the cold.

It’s funny, I don’t think I would have told you back when I was a kid that Harry Potter would have shaped my life. I was in middle school participating in Battle of the Books when I first picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I had wanted to read it, but another girl was assigned it instead. Then her parents said she wasn’t allowed to read it because of the witchcraft. My parents didn’t care. I read the book.

And then I read the next one.

And stayed up all night pouring over the third one.

I went to summer camp the same week that Goblet of Fire came out, and I had been obsessing over it for weeks. I was allowed to take it with me in the car, but not allowed to take it to camp. Order of the Phoenix came out. More movies. More books. The group of people I was role playing with grew stronger, more tight knit. We sent each other Christmas cards and birthday presents. We became The Slytherin Dorms.

Fastforward to 2010. My small roleplaying group is now one of the biggest Harry Potter RPGs on the internet. I’ll be going to my second to last midnight showing ever with my boyfriend that I met because of Harry Potter. I live in this town because of Harry Potter. It’s the reason I managed to go on a cross-country road trip with someone I’d met for the first time, knowing that we had been best friends online for years. I went to Disney World for the first time because of these books, made friends because of these books, learned to sew and to create costumes. If it weren’t for Harry Potter, my graphic design skills would have fallen by the wayside, or never existed. I would have never learned to code PHP.

Tonight, I’ll be lining up in the twenty degree Wisconsin weather – a far cry from the last midnight showing, middle of summer in eastern North Carolina – and I’ll have a smile on my face. It might be almost over, but it’s been a journey worth taking. I now have a “real” wand to replace the chopstick I took to the first couple of films. I have photos of me standing in front of Hogwarts Castle. For a ton of people, I’m sure tonight will be just another movie. But for some of us…

“It’s real for us.”