I Love Harry Potter!

I haven’t talked about my love for Harry Potter nearly enough. I’m a huge fan, it’s my favourite series ever! But it wasn’t always like that.
I have a very interesting history with HP, it started a long time ago, when I was very young.

One of my cousins loves HP, she’s tried to get me to read it for as long as I can remember. I always refused. I did not want to read it. Nope. It was not happening.
I thought that it was a very dark, very grim series. I had very little idea what it was about. It just didn’t appeal to me. I obviously never read the blurb. If I had, I think it would have appealed to me.

As for thinking it was so grim, the only thing I can trace it back to, is a conversation I heard between my cousins when I was very little, probably three or four. They were talking about how sad it was that some fictional character had died. I think they were talking about Harry Potter, but tbh I might have just assumed that, because they all liked HP. Of course a character dying isn’t exactly unusual in what I’m reading now, but to a three or four year old me, it sounded awful and dark. It’s still awful, but it doesn’t make a book seem particularly dark anymore.

Then it Became Habit

Eventually I just got used to hating HP, and refusing to read it.
I actually started to sort of want to read it, but I was too stubborn to admit that.

Then my brother started reading it. He almost never reads, and I hated that he’d read something I hadn’t. I was supposed to be the bookworm. Yes, this is a very petty reason. I still refused to read it, but only because I had other things I would rather read.

One day, my cousin bought Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, (the textbook, not the movie) and Quidditch Through the Ages for my brother. He was flipping through Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, laughing at all the silly things Harry and Ron had written in it, and making me incredibly curious. When he put it down, I picked it up, and, since I don’t like flipping through books, read the whole thing.
I found it quite funny, but I didn’t really get it. I knew I should really just read HP, but I still didn’t for another couple of months.

Crazy Things I Thought

Because I had never intended to read it, I told people I didn’t care if they spoiled it. That. Was. Really. Stupid. I knew the entire plot of the first three books by the time I actually read them, and I knew various other spoilers from the later books. However, I didn’t have all my facts quite straight, I obviously misunderstood some things.

DON’T READ THIS SECTION IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!!!! AND IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY READ HP, TRUST ME, YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!!!

• I was under the impression that the Philosophers Stone was a giant boulder… I don’t even know where that came from.
• Because I was a very confused human, I thought that some ministry witch tried to kill Sirius, and that she thought she had, but she’d actually whacked a pumpkin with an axe. Also I thought that once he actually did die, somebody chopped off his head, and stuck it in the fireplace.
  Yes, I know, that makes no sense. I was a very, VERY confused human.
• For some reason I thought that Fred & George (Or, as I actually thought, some random dude’s twin brothers), were selling pygmy puffs at Hogwarts, when they both randomly dropped dead.
  Once again, this makes a ton of sense… not.

I’m sure there was other things too, but those are the ones that really stood out to me. Because wut? No, just no. None of those things happened, and really, thinking they did, I can almost understand why I didn’t want to read it. Almost.

Then I Finally Read it!

Finally, finally, FINALLY, about two years ago a actually read it! I was home alone, I had nothing to read, and I was bored. But, the first HP book was sitting on the coffee table, so I picked it up, figuring I’d give it a try.
I didn’t put it down for the rest of the night. After I finished, I whined for weeks until the second book got returned to the library. I quickly grew to adore HP, I talked about it to everyone, I made my parents read it, I made a couple of my friends read it (those of them who hadn’t already read it), I made my brother finish,* I drove everybody crazy by talking about it so much.

Now I’m a huge fan! I love Harry Potter so much! I own all the books, and as much Harry Potter themed stuff as I can get my hands on. The only item of clothing I’ve ever bought myself was a Hufflepuff shirt, I have a dark mark key chain, all sorts of stuff.**

I once almost complimented a complete stranger on their HP shirt. I didn’t, but I seriously considered it. And that’s really saying something. I don’t like talking to strangers. At. All.

Basically, Harry Potter is awesome!

*He’s a slooooooooowwwww reader.

**Also, just realized I named two things that were basically opposites. Hufflepuff, and death eater.

Do you like Harry Potter? What house are you in? (I’m a Hufflepuff) What’s a book you had completely spoiled for you?