marauders4evr: Oh dear. Gather round lads, because it’s time for a story. This is the story of
marauders4evr: Oh dear. Gather round lads, because it’s time for a story. This is the story of six-year-old marauders4evr. Six-year-old me saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (as it was called in the US) in the movie theater when my mother took the adults with disabilities she taught on a field trip and asked if I wanted to go along. Six-year-old me fell in love with this franchise immediately and spent the hour after the movie racing around the aisles of Walmart, shouting random nonsense at different objects to try to get them to move, being completely blown away when one of those motion-censor dancing Santa Claus hats did. (Highlight of my life to be honest.) Six-year-old me had no idea how to say Hermione’s name, much less how to spell it. Six-year-old me was a proud Gryffindor because Harry was a proud Gryffindor and I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. Six-year-old me wore down my red and yellow crayons so fast because every drawing had to have those colors in it. Six-year-old me read through the first book in a weekend and was devastated when my dog ripped it apart shortly thereafter. Whilst reading the book, six-year-old me was stumped when I came to Hermione’s name, along with names like Diagon and Quirrell. But six-year-old me quickly adjusted and became engulfed in the world, learning more and more each day simply by rereading the book. Flash-forward to seven-year-old me who was on the seesaw with my best friend when my dad came home with the second book. Seven-year-old me leapt off the seesaw and caused my friend to crash down, resulting in him bursting into tears. Seven-year-old me knew the best way to resolve playground injuries was by reading him Harry Potter and so we spent the next few days reading the Chamber of Secrets aloud, taking turns, still getting stumped on big words, callously ripping off the back summary for our first-grade book report. We mixed together different sodas to make Polyjuice Potion, waved around twigs, and shoved tree branches beneath our legs to play Quidditch. We were still Gryffindors because our heroes were Gryffindors. And we wanted to be just like them. Eight-year-old me was a little shit who knew that she was in Ravenclaw because she was smarter than everyone else. (Eight-year-old me loved Hermione more than anyone.) Eight-year-old me somehow missed the fact that Prisoner of Azkaban had been released and begged my elementary school librarian to let me read it, even though I was only in the second grade and it was a chapter book reserved for Grades 3-5. My elementary school librarian kindly told me that it was too difficult for me and when I told her that I could read it, she made me do the five-finger rule. I flipped open the book and read the first chapter aloud with no mistakes. She let me take it and I didn’t give it back for two months because I was rereading it over and over again. Eight-year-old me knew so many facts about Harry Potter (facts I’ve since forgotten but we’ll get to that later). Eight-year-old me loved this series with all of my heart. Now ten-year-old me found herself in a Harry Potter trivia gameshow at Border’s one day. And ten-year-old me made a fool out of myself because, when asked what the French academy’s name was, ten-year-old me said something akin to, “Boxabixabuxatin.” (Ten-year-old me was not fluent in French. I had read Beaubatons multiple times but didn’t even think about how to pronounce it.) But even though I lost the game, I still happily bought the Order of the Phoenix, even though it had taken me almost two years to get through Goblet of Fire because it was so long. Ten-year-old me went home and happily showed my friend (the one I hurt on the seesaw). Ten-year-old me’s friend promptly told ten-year-old me that Sirius died. Ten-year-old me didn’t speak to that friend for about a month. But I had other friends and we were obsessed with Harry Potter. We would go onto Scholastic.com and play the games and take the quizzes and we’d go onto JKRowling.com (Back when it was a cool website) and would find the little Easter Eggs. And we’d go onto Sugar Quill and giggle as we read inappropriate fanfiction. (We’re not talking smut here, we’re talking like Ron kisses Hermione on the cheek and ooooh Ron kissed Hermione on the cheek the scandal!) And you know what? My friends would recite the Sorting Hat’s song and I’d fumble and mumble because I didn’t know it. My friends would talk about minor characters whose names were foreign to me. My friends would recall specific page numbers and I’d gape at them because how do you remember something like that? My friends would recall who the portrait in the first floor corridor was, the first word Harry ever said, the inventor of chocolate frogs, etc. I had no clue. Despite the fact that I read the books, watched the movies, read fanfiction, wrote fanfiction, and played the video games, these facts escaped me. Ah now thirteen-year-old me. Thirteen-year-old me was battered, bruised, and nauseous, slumped over in her wheelchair, barely able to keep her head up. And yet my family and I still got out to our local Kmart for the Deathly Hallows release. It was a huge party. People were playing Scene-It and 20 Questions and every time I was called on, I grunted a response, not caring if it was true or not. These little facts meant nothing to me. I just wanted to read Harry Potter. I had gone through one of the hardest surgeries of my life and I wanted to read Harry Potter damn it. I just wanted to be a part of that world again. Oh…seventeen-year-old me. Seventeen-year-old me got home from the movie theater at three o’clock in the morning, crawled up onto my couch, and numbly stared at the ceiling, listening to Oliver Boyd and the Remembrall’s End of an Era, as it slowly hit me that I had just watched the very last movie. Seventeen-year-old me said things like King Crosses, Private Drive, Gilbert Grindelwald, Walaaaburga, etc. Seventeen-year-old me was still an unabashed fanatic who preferred the wizarding world to my own. I just, you know, wasn’t an expert on said world. But that never stopped me from writing fanfiction or spending hours on fansites and as my senior year of high school came to a close, I even created a tumblr account with a dumb name and a turtle-duck icon. Twenty-three-year-old me has written and published her own books, has seen J.K. Rowling and Eddie Redmayne in Carnegie Hall (front row seats, lads!), and has had the unbelievable pleasure of talking to my preschool/kindergarten students about Harry Potter, washing the milk off of a stuffed Fawkes so that my four-year-old student could sleep with him during naptime. Twenty-three-year-old me still has that tumblr account with that stupid name and that turtle duck icon, albeit with a lot more followers. Twenty-three-year-old me still says Sorcerer’s Stone and is still floored that Harry doesn’t live on Private Drive. Twenty-three-year-old me still considers herself a proud Ravenclaw but you know what, with everything I’ve done over the past five years of undergrad, Slytherin has never been a closer second. Twenty-three-year-old me has given away most of my toys and collectibles and if you were to ask me where my books are at this exact moment, I couldn’t tell you. If you were to ask me what Harry Potter’s grandmother’s name is, I couldn’t tell you. If you were to ask me how to pronounce Newt Scamander’s surname, I couldn’t tell you. If you were to ask me what year Hogwarts was founded, I couldn’t tell you. And if you were to ask me what my favorite character, Regulus Black, said in his most iconic note, I couldn’t tell you. Memory is a fickle thing and sometimes your brain has to make room for other priorities. But if you were to ask me how much Harry Potter has meant to me, I would sit you down and would tell you about six-year-old me who went into that movie theater and saw Harry Potter for the first time. This longwinded recollection of my life doesn’t even begin to cover how much this series has impacted me. Not even close. But I wanted to give you all a brief outline to give you an idea. To use a corny turn-of-phrase, Harry Potter is my past, my present, and my future. Despite its author’s increasingly problematic actions, I will unabashedly love and defend this series until I die. And even then, I still don’t know half the crap that other fans know. And you know what? Who cares? Who cares if you meet a Harry Potter fan who is wearing a red-and-gold scarf and declares that their favorite character is, well, Harry Potter? Who cares if you meet a fan who can stare you down and recite the entire first book, word-by-word, without messing up once? Who cares if you meet someone like me who’s awkwardly floating in the middle, knowing the exact ingredients to make a Wiggenweld Potion but not knowing Sirius Black’s wand type? It’s 2017. It’s a fictional franchise. There’s no need to gatekeep who is a fan and who isn’t a fan. For god’s sake, just let people enjoy the series. And if someone comes up to you and all they really know is that Slytherin has dark wizards when you happen to be an encyclopedia of knowledge, turn to that page that talks about the dark wizards in Slytherin and talk to that person about the dark wizards in Slytherin! But above all else, stop being pretentious twats who think that they’re ‘bigger fans’ than everyone else because they know more useless information about a fictional series! I don’t care if you only watched the first movie and you did so four years ago, I don’t care if you couldn’t tell me the names of the books, I don’t care if the only actual interaction with Harry Potter you had is that Simpsons Treehouse of Horror sketch you watched fifteen years ago. If you call yourself a Harry Potter fan then you are more than welcome to have a cup of tea with me, regardless of how ‘big’ of a fan you are. -- source link