My mom is the most avid reader I know. She devours books at a nearly inhuman pace. In the last several years, she has taken to writing book reviews for an online newspaper. So it wasn’t a surprise that I also loved to read as a child - it was modeled so well for me.
My mom loved Nancy Drew books when she was a girl and steered me towards them during my younger days. I own most of the original 55 books and poopoo the idea of the later, more modern covers. There was something very comforting about those original ones, with their glossy hard covers and the appetizing smell of the pages. I never read through all of them, but I certainly read the first three a bunch of times. I believe The Secret of the Old Clock was the first book I ever read cover to cover in a single day.
I loved taking books out of the library and would often check out the maximum amount of picture books allowed, something like 15. I had a plethora of Berenstein Bears books when I was even younger than my Nancy Drew days. I still have those, and they are surprisingly beautifully written for children’s books.
The first book I remember reading more than once was Roald Dahl’s Matilda. While Dahl is more famous for his chocolate factory tale, the story of the young girl who is so incredibly intelligent that she develops ESP is pure magic. It captivated me many years before the movie, which I found hugely disappointing, was made. I took to reading it annually for two or three years.
Around the same time, my friend lent me a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. CS Lewis's first chronicle of Narnia presented a land as intriguing as Neverland had been years earlier. I wanted to taste the rose flavored Turkish delight given to Edmund by the ice queen, and have my face blessed by Aslan’s breath. This was another work I revisited repeatedly. The rest of the series was harder for me to get through, though I did eventually manage it. Still, I kept coming back to the original adventures of the Pevensie children.
All this to say, I didn’t shy away from books, and I certainly didn’t shy away from fantasy.
In the summer of 2000, I stuck my slightly elitist nose up in the air when the news began reporting on the massively anticipated release of the fourth in a series of children’s books entitled Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire. The news depicted lines of people snaking around book stores to purchase what I assumed was an immature picture book. That was what the phrase “children’s book” said to me when I was 14. The idea of it just rubbed me the wrong way, though I don’t know why a book inspiring children to read should have been so offensive. You couldn’t escape the idea of Harry Potter that summer. It was the same summer I went to Europe with my grandmother. When we were in some fancy neighborhood of London, our tour guide pointed out a house that the Potter author had recently purchased. I rolled my eyes.
Seriously. What could be so great about a kids book?
Much later in the summer, we spent some days in Cape May, New Jersey with friends of ours. Our families would go on joint ventures to the Atlantic bookstore, which was a highlight of the trip. That year, Harry Potter was of course front and center in the store's display. The day we went was the first time I saw Goblet of Fire in the flesh, and I finally realized that my idea of a children’s book did not match up with reality. This book was over 700 pages long. Not a picture book by any stretch of the imagination.
The family we were staying with had a college aged daughter whose intelligence I admired. I trusted her taste as she had recommended Timothy Zahn’s iconic Heir to the Empire Star Wars series. She scooped a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone off the shelf, telling me all of her college friends were reading it and loving it.
Huh, I thought. If the college kids were enjoying it, maybe I should too. I also walked out of Atlantic with the book about the boy wizard that day.
My friend Carly got to the book before I did. Sitting on the beach a day or two later, she had already nearly finished the 350 page tale. “How was it?” I asked.
“Pretty good,” she replied modestly.
And that was that.
My family drove to South Carolina after that. Finally, when I finished whatever other book I had been reading, I cracked the cover on my own copy of Harry. I enjoyed it. It didn’t change my life or anything, but it was a lot of fun, and the twist at the end was certainly a surprise. I remember looking at the first line of the last chapter – “It was Quirrel” – and being genuinely shocked. I did appreciate the mystery of the book more than anything else. It had been well crafted, nearly impossible to figure out despite the breadcrumbs left on the path.
What the hell, I figured. I picked up a copy of Chamber of Secrets in South Carolina. I handed Sorcerer off to my mom, and we spent days reading on the beach. Another mom on a blanket nearby struck up a conversation about the pronunciation of Hermione’s name one day. It was the first Harry Potter communal experience I remember having. This stranger talked to us because of a kid’s book. It was definitely the start of something much bigger.
Chamber of Secrets was also the start of something bigger for me. While it is one of the least loved by the Harry Potter fandom, it is the book that hooked me into the series. I am an avid journaler, so the idea of penned memories talking back to you captured my fancy. I can probably credit my beginning my Open Diary to this idea, so in a way I met my husband because of this. I’m also a casual snake lover, and I hate spiders, so two more checks in the pro column for this book.
My cousin Sally lives in South Carolina, and I unfortunately don’t get to see her very often. We did have dinner with her while we were down there, and we had a lovely discussion about the Potter series. Sally is incredibly intelligent and beautifully soulful, and she couldn’t sing Potter's praises enough. She did warn me that the series would take a dark turn in the third book, and that someone would die in the fourth. She could see the depth of the series, deepening the importance of the subject matter only growing as it continued on.
Funny enough, even though it was the summer of Goblet of Fire, we had a hard time getting our hands on a copy of Prisoner of Azkaban once I finished Chamber. I believe my mom finally found it at Costco, which is probably where she picked up Goblet once I plowed through Prisoner. I remember late night bedside-lamp lit reading sessions as I finished those two books.
I thought the series would make tremendous movies. And then, one day, we went to the theater and spotted a poster for Sorcerer’s Stone, due to be released in November.
By the time the movie came out, I was a full on Potterhead. My family made plans with my friend Pete’s family to see the first movie at 5:30 on the Friday it was released. It became our tradition all the way through Goblet of Fire. My parents had read the books by this point, and loved them. His parents also loved them, and though we were already friends, our love of the series only deepened our friendship, a new layer of substance.
The day the Sorcerer’s Stone movie was released, as soon as I got home from school, I plucked my copy of the book off my bookshelf and dug back into it, getting as far as Diagonal Alley before we went to see the movie. This was the beginning of my rereads.
Funny enough, I can’t really say for certain why my love for the series burst open and surrounded me and brought me into this Potter loving bubble. Sure, the Wizarding World is tremendously fleshed out. Hogwarts is the place more than any other fictional location that I would love to visit and spend time, but I don’t remember latching onto these ideas on my first read. I suppose that as time with Harry, Ron, and Hermione stretched out before me, my love for them increased. The more I got to know them, the more they, and the community surrounding the books, became a place of refuge.
All Potter fans can remember that long drought that the “three year summer” brought. This was the time between the release of Goblet of Fire and the release of Order of the Phoenix, the longest stretch between any of the Potter books. Until then, Rowling rolled out one book every year, which was a tremendous feat, given the amount of intricate planning that went into the series and the length of each book. The fans were frustrated by the break, but Rowling was going through a lot at the time. It made sense that it would take her so long to polish up the longest book of the series.
Of course I attended a midnight party at Barnes & Noble in Edison to celebrate the release of book 5. The idea of a book series inspiring people to gather in the wee hours to be among the first to purchase a new book brought tears to my literature loving eyes. I didn’t participate in any of the party’s activities, but my dad and I circled the bookstore once or twice to see what they had to offer. Small children dressed in hats and robes played all kinds of funny games. Now, so many years later, it seems strange to imagine a time when children didn’t devour the Potter books or inhale fantasy series the way some of them do in a post-Potter world. But getting the chance to glimpse the beginning of the glimmering change was truly awesome.
When my copy of Order of the Phoenix was finally in my hands, paid for in part by a gift certificate, given to me by my friend, Joe Mancuso, for my high school graduation a month earlier, I cracked the spine immediately. I read about 100 pages that night, getting to the fake out of Hagrid‘s death before putting it down to sleep. It took me a week to get through the whole book because that whopper is 856 pages. I probably would have read it in less time, but I’m sure there was an element of wanting to savor it that slowed me down a smidge.
To this day, Order of the Phoenix remains my favorite book of all time. I do recognize that it is not flawless – someone should’ve told Joanne to cut that whole Grawp subplot. However, its allegorical imagery of the rise of Hitler stirred personal notes within me. The book made me angry in so many ways, particularly surrounding the character of Dolores Umbridge. I know that many people feel uncomfortable when a book makes them as angry as the Phoenix made its readers; however, I was simply in awe of Joanne’s ability to make me feel as frustrated and angry as Harry himself. Many fans dislike what has come to be known as all caps Harry, who rails at his friends at every turn, not understanding what they can’t understand about his deep-seated anxiety. I have been there, Harry. I relate to that. Hard.
In the stretch before Half Blood Prince was released, I reread the entire series at least once. Maybe twice. I got to know the characters and the world even more. I was so ready for all the juicy tidbits that came out in the sixth book.
I happened to be in Britain for the release of Half Blood Pee, as Jon and I fondly call it. I was devastated not to attend a midnight release party. Our tour group was in Stratford the night of the book release. I knew I’d be able to find an open book shop in the middle of town, but I wasn’t sure if it was walking distance from our hotel. If I had been on the trip on my own, I would’ve figured it out. My parents weren’t as into letting me do that.
The next day was the last of our tour, putting us in London, where we had started. I knew I would be able to get a copy of the book as soon as we got to the capital city. However, first we traveled to Blenheim Palace, one of the most beautiful palaces I have ever been to. It was hard for me to fully immerse myself in the beauty when I was so eager to hold the book in my hands. I was especially frustrated because we had several hours on the bus that day, which would’ve been prime reading time. I checked the Blenheim bookstore hopefully, though I wasn’t really expecting to find the book there. I didn’t.
When we got back on the bus, some of the other tourists wondered if I had found the book. Apparently, there had been some kind of fair going on on the front lawn that we completely missed, and people there were actually selling it. Curses! Foiled again!
Once we were back to London, we went into the first bookstore we could find so I could get my copy. The next day, we took a three hour bus ride to Wales, so I had some solid book time. However, my then boyfriend:now husband had gotten the book at midnight and finished it by the time we reached him. He was gracious enough to give me time on my own to sit and read until it was done.
In 2007, the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released. I had graduated from college and was working full time at Nordstrom, so I was poised to get to Barnes and Noble in the same mall in a timely fashion on release night. My parents met me with an appropriately themed shirt so I could celebrate with the others.
My experience was similar to the midnight party of Order. I didn’t participate in any of the activities. I think they were mostly for younger kids, plus I’m big on the social anxiety circle. My parents and I wandering around and probably had a cup of coffee. I remember standing in the Starbucks café area of the bookstore when a voice came over the loudspeaker to announce that it was finally midnight and books would begin to be handed out. And a cheer rose up in the store as loud as any concert I’ve ever been to. Tears pushed behind my eyes as I again reveled in the beauty of such an enthusiastic response to a book. Was there ever another like it? (As it turned out, I would attend two more midnight parties for books – one for Breaking Dawn, the last book in the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, and one for The Cursed Child script. Neither were a big deal or particularly well attended. Nothing at all like this final chapter in the Potter series.)
My parents and I purchased two copies of Deathly Hallows so that my mother and I could read simultaneously. I wrapped my own copy in a blue stretchy textbook cover left over from my high school days since I would be reading it at the food court or in the Nordstrom break room and didn’t want anyone to spot what I was reading and possibly spoil anything for me. I don’t know why people get so much pleasure out of spoiling the anticipated pleasures of others.
That weekend I was in the car with my parents, reading in the backseat, when I got to a certain pivotal death halfway through the book. The implications of losing that character struck hard, and I tried to hold back the sobs that would’ve wracked my body had I been on my own. However, one particularly loud sob was heard by my mom, who asked, “Is it that bad?” All I could do was uh-huh in agreement. That particular death gets me every time, even in the movies.
Don’t worry – I did have the opportunity for a really good cry when I finally finished the series. I managed it one morning before heading off to work. I was dressed nicely and ready to go, and I don’t think I anticipated finishing the book over my breakfast. Despite the book’s happy ending, when I had read “All was well,” I laid the book down, laid myself down on my bed, and wept . It was a big old ugly cry, with sobbing and snot and all of it. It felt to me as someone had died. I knew I was never going to read anything as profound, moving, and, highly anticipated again. Nearly 20 years later, this remains true. There was so much emotion wrapped up in the Potter series, between my own growing into adulthood, graduating high school, graduating, college, witnessing the growth of the fandom, making friends based on good literature, waiting and waiting and waiting for the next books to be released… While I may someday read a book that is technically better than a Harry Potter, it cannot match up to the experiences that marry with that series.
Luckily (maybe?), Deathly Hallows was not the end of Harry Potter. Of course, the movies lagged slightly behind the books, so all of the fans got to relive releases with those. Every so often, new editions of the books were released that became fun to collect. Barnes and Noble published the first two in leather bindings. They made great holiday presents for two years and I was sad when they didn’t release anymore. Jim Kay illustrated some beautiful, gigantic version that we started collecting, that we stopped when I broke ties with Joanne. More on that later. in Britain, they released house specific additions, so of course I picked up the Ravenclaw Philosopher’s Stone. And at one point, Jon and I thought it would be cool to purchase Philosopher’s Stone in every country that we visited in its native language. We own it in Welsh, Dutch, German, and French, for Luxembourg. But the breakup with Joanne led to a stop of this fun practice as well. (Boo, Joanne.)
In 2009, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened at Universal studio, and my family made the pilgrimage to the fully imagined immersive world of Hosgsmeade. We spent hours in line for shops, and rides, spending an entire day in a very small section of the theme park. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, though. I loved being one of the first to have the privilege of experiencing that level of immersion in the world I had come to love so much. I’ve been to Universal twice more since the opening of Diagon Alley, which is even better than Hogsmead.
When I got a new teaching job, one of my coworkers roped most of us into working at a camp over the summer. It was great in that we got to pick which weeks we worked and what we taught about for a week. Though I initially started as a Star Wars camp instructor, I was over the moon when the woman who had taught a Harry Potter camp for years gave it up. I was proud of the program I created, where students would choose and paint their own wands, get sorted into houses, “transfigure” Play doh in a Pictionary style game, and even act out their own green screen scenes. The kids adored it. I even overheard some of them say it was the best week of their lives. Unfortunately, as time went on, reading became a little less sexy. I got campers who had never read the books, maybe hadn’t even seen all, if any, of the movies. But it was fun teaching at my own version of Hogwarts while it lasted.
Sometime around 2013 or 2014, my husband began listening to and talking about podcasts. I knew there must be a show out there I could listen to that would bring me joy. I quickly discovered Alohomora!, a podcast produced by the HP fansite Mugglenet. This show involved a group of fans rereading the HP series at the rate of a chapter per week and discussing each chapter in depth. It added a new layer of my own series revisitation, exploring theories or points of view I may never have thought of. I listened to so much of the show that the hosts began to feel like friends. Jon joined in on my rereads, and when we got to Order, we discovered Harry’s mother’s maiden name. The name of our future daughter was fated. Eventually, during the reread of Half-Blood Prince, I got to appear as a guest host on Episode 143. I went through the entire series with the show.
In 2017, my family attended a MuggleNet event entitled 19 years later. On September 1, those of us who were willing to pay for it got the theme park to ourselves with a couple of D-list actors from the movies. There were panels, meet ups, free food, and drink… We also had the privilege of meeting up with one of the Alohomora hosts named Michael Harle. We spent an entire day at the park with him, and he even treated us to lunch. It was a really special time when I felt recognized by a personality I had spent years listening to who was excessively kind and immensely talented and caring.
Actually, we saw Michael again a few years later on a trip he took to NYC. We visited the Central Park Zoo and the Lego Store together before taking in a production of the wildly funny Potter spoof Puffs. He gifted me with some old Backstreet Boys singles he was ready to part with and a set of mystery Fantastic Beasts Lego minifigures. He had a talent for being able to feel which figures they were, so he gave Jon and me a Newt and Tina set. He was right about which they were.
Michael is magic. I wish we were closer.
The Harry Potter Studio Tour at Leavesdon Studio near London opened in 2012, and Jon and I finally made it there in 2016. A week earlier, we had explored India, but the full scale model of Hogwarts used in many of the films elicited more tears from me than did the Taj Mahal. (I was pretty embarrassed by that fact!) The sets, costumes, and the prop displays are an absolute must for any Potter fan. And it’s another place you can drink Butterbeer, so…
But, as alluded to earlier, not all expansions of the Wizarding World were joyful.
In 2013, the news broke that JR would be penning a new series of movies entitled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I believe I nearly cried with joy at the thought of my favorite author returning to my favorite fantasy world. I listened to a new podcast in the run up to the movie being released and was beside myself when I got to see the finished product in November 2016. And that first movie, the initial Fantastic Beasts, delivered. It was a ton of fun, and just a smidge more mature as the main characters were adults rather than teenagers. The acting was great, the story was intriguing, and the twist at the end left me slapping my husband repeatedly in the arm screaming “What is happening?!” Needless to say, I could not wait for the next installment.
Again, I followed a podcast that chronicled reports on The Crimes of Grindelwald. I knew the names of new characters and a little bit about what each would be going through before I took my seat in the theater. On release day, there was an unexpected blizzard, which led to our being late to the theater. We missed the entire opening prison break scene. Truthfully, this may have been divine intervention, the hand of God, trying to keep me away from what was about to blow up in my face. As the movie went on, I realized that many of the unfolding events did not make sense. Characters we knew from previous movies weren’t behaving consistently with how they were portrayed earlier. New characters were barely even acknowledged by name. About halfway through the movie, I thought to myself, “I think this movie is bad.” When it ended I leaned across my husband to ask my mother if she had understood what was going on at all. She had not.
Somehow, in recent years, it has become trendy for movie plots to move at such a breakneck pace that the multitude of action sequences unfolding on the screen becomes inconsequential and renders the plot completely disinteresting. The characters become a confusing mishmash of underdeveloped stereotypes. The Crimes of Grindelwald very much fell victim to this trend. Regardless of my falling out with Joanne, I’m not sure I would have gone to the movies to see The Secrets of Dumbledore. (We eventually watched it at home, and it was just as bad as the second one.)
In 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was announced. This work, being billed as the eighth story, would be a play. The script would also be released for public consumption. It wasn’t written by Rowling, but it was approved by her, and I was out of my mind with excitement. Barnes & Noble hosted a traditional midnight party for the script, though this one was not nearly as well attended as those for the actual book series. A small line of patrons snaked through the bargain racks to pick up our bright yellow books.
In college I was told that a script is never meant to be read to yourself, so in order to have a more authentic experience, I invited a hoard of friends over to read The Cursed Child aloud. It was thrilling to sit in a room full of trained actors and English teachers who could bring the script to life.
Except by the time we hit the end of the first part of the play, I wished more for its swift death than whatever life we were attempting to breathe into it. Every time I turned the page, I hoped for a massive redirect of action. But my hopes were futile. It was like the worst possible form of fanfiction. Character traits established in the original book series were contradicted left and right. Even the rules of time travel so well established in Prisoner of Azkaban, got shit on. The twists in the plot were hollow and contrived. The worst thing by far was the queer baiting, painting a beautiful romance between two young boys that was never realized or even truly intended. (But it is there. Sorry. Read the script or see the play again. Tell me it isn't there in that staircase scene. You can’t . Because it is.)
Did I just write “see the play again”? How silly of me. One of the most egregious parts of this fiasco is the fact that it’s a play in the first place. As books and movies, the Potter story was easily accessible to many, affordable and available wherever books were sold. Last I checked, professional theater is produced in a lot less cities than books are sold in, and a ticket to a Broadway production is more than quadruple a movie ticket. Who was this thing being made for? A very small minority of fans, it would seem.
I did get lucky enough to win a lottery that let me purchase tickets to both parts of the play for $20 each on the last Wednesday before it was out of previews. $80 for the total experience was well worth it, but this is not how the majority of seats are sold. Seeing the show live was quite an experience, to be fair. The special effects were jaw dropping, and a good amount of the acting was top notch, particularly Noma Dumezweni as Hermione Granger. But the scripts and its problems remained unchanged. Part of me truly hoped that the published script was some kind of joke and that an actual viewing would restore my faith in the play. Alas.
One of my favorite Potter related activities has become reading the Wikipedia summary of The Cursed Child to Potter fans who are unfamiliar with it. The response is always one of absurd disbelief - Really? Cedric became a Death Eater in one timeline? Bellatrix and Voldemore had the opportunity to bang at some point? Harry Potter is afraid of pigeons??!! Yes, Jack Thorne really wrote these things, and Joanne really signed off on them. My theory is she was sick of people asking her to write a follow up, so she allowed something that contradicted her work so hard to become a thing.
But there are actual fans of it. Good for them, I guess. I’m glad someone can get joy out of
It.
But by far, the most damning piece of Potter’s semi-fall from grace has been none other than Joanne Rowling herself. In 2019, Joanne tweeted her support for a woman named Maya Forstater, who lost her job after asserting that transgender individuals aren’t the gender they feel. Joanne (remember, pronounce that name with a nasally, contemptuous “a” sound in the middle) went on to write a piece justifying her views on her personal website. I refuse to read it, though I know she cites her experiences as a woman as defining and asserts that those who didn’t grow up “as women” couldn’t possibly understand the struggles she has endured. (Nevermind the fact that these other women have had to endure an entirely different struggle, a truth that while it does not belong to you, Joanne, is a truth nonetheless. How about recognizing that the struggle of one does not define nor negate the struggle of others?)
This statement was a punch-in-the-gut betrayal. How could a work of such vitriolic hate come from the same pen that wrote a series considered by many to be a landmark work on love and acceptance? It was a declaration of a hard line from her - I love and accept people from all different backgrounds, OH BUT NOT YOU, TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS. It garnered her the title of TERF, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist.This is a group of women who claim to be super liberal and super feminist, except for the part where they don’t include trans women in their definition of women.
Very little makes me angrier than discrimination. Than trying to force your own life situations on the lives of people you know little to nothing about. Throughout my lifetime, I have changed, well, mostly expanded, my own views on others as I learned about different groups and individuals. When you boil it down, I know all humans are just that - human. I believe that no one should attempt to belittle or dehumanize someone or attempt to prove that their reality isn’t real. It’s not YOUR REALITY. It’s theirs. If no one is being harmed, let them live it. Try to understand it. Sympathize. Empathize. Come together as humans rather than looking for new excuses to drive people apart.
Joanne’s line in the sand is still raw and painful, even five years after she drew it. Funny; all it would have taken was for her to issue an apology, and many wouldn’t question it - she’d have been forgiven by those of us who have a hard time doing so now without a lot of questions. But instead she continued to assert her bigoted stance, and for that, she has cut off a very large amount of her fans.
I personally have had to do a lot of grappling with my identity as a Harry Potter fan because of her actions. Much of the fandom has done so and come down on many different ways of dealing with Joanne’s betrayal. (And then there are those that agree with her and speak in support of her beliefs, but I’m not talking about those prejudiced individuals.) I find it impossible to cut Harry out of my life entirely. The books and movies still bring me unparalleled joy. The deeply developed characters and themes remain a stand out in a world of subpar books written solely to please the masses. I have watched the first two movies with my daughter, and the boy wizard and his friends have enchanted her, as well. I love playing Harry with her; she often pretends to be the titular character, living under a staircase in our basement. She has HP action figures we create our own stories with. She has dreamed of Hermione coming over and blowing a hole in our hallway wall. Someday, we’ll take her to the Wizarding World or the Studio Tour to enjoy a butter beer and maybe a chocolate frog.
But for now, I have tapered off on the official HP merchandise I purchase. (Which is saying something. Aside from the many copies of the books I spoke about, we have an extensive wand collection. We are collectors - we want more, but we’re controlling ourselves.) There are plenty of unofficial vendors I can support, or I can live with the COPIOUS amounts of HP merch I already own. I have stopped going to new HP exhibits and no longer buy new editions of the texts I once reveled in collecting. There is a scar on the part of my heart reserved for Harry, despite how much I still love him and his existence. To a large extent, I have been able to distance the idea of the story from the idea of the creator.
But that scar will always loom there, a shadow splotched over something that should represent only pure, unadulterated love.
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