Sad and ridiculous that an adult woman aged twenty and a quarter should still be lamenting the good old days of Harry Potter. Nostalgia is apparently not just for the chronologically advanced.
The truth is, my entire “teenagehood” was tied in with Harry Potter. I picked up the first book when I was twelve, just after my dad kicked the proverbial bucket, and I never put it down again. The last book was building up a hype as I was writing my finals.
And all my friends and family were into it too: sunny afternoons lazing around the living room, discussing theories and inexplicably shameful crushes on fictional characters. My erstwhile bestfriend and I had many heated discussions about Snape. She was pro-Snape, I was anti-Snape. This is what we did instead of going out, getting drunk and shagging. (I’m still not sure whether I’m happy or sad about that.)
Harry Potter fanfiction was my toe in the door to writing. Before fanfiction, I scribbled something here and there, but then I found this world and I was hooked. I learned the basics of writing there. And I do mean the absolute basics: spelling, grammar, critique. A large deal of my youth passed in front of the computer screen, glued to writing a Voldemort/Hermione fanfic (as opposed to surfing porn on the sly).
I even grew up to be a witch…back in school, my erstwhile friends (Christians) warned that Harry Potter was causing curious kids to pursue witchcraft etc. Of course, back then, I didn’t know anything about paganism, Wicca, or Witchcraft; and nor did it matter to me. I only became interested in it a couple of years later, and not, I promise you, because of Harry Potter, though of course those erstwhile friends of mine would probably disagree.
I imagine they are very smug these days, knowing that I “turned out wrong” – proves their point, doesn’t it? Not really, but they won’t ever realize this. One of these ex-friends is actually studying to become a Pastor, and I fear that I’m a case study in progress. My deviation from the norm will probably cause several kids to lose their Harry Potter escape (at the hands of bezerkly panicking parents). Sorry for that, folks.
Luckily I’ve found the Twilight series. You’d think vampires and horny teenagers and rampaging werewolves would somehow upset concerned mothers more than a wizarding school, but apparently not. Hell, there’s even a site devoted to these “Twilight moms”.
But it could never beat Hoggy warty Hogwarts – Padfoot Lives!!
