Enchanted, freed, knocked out

Dobby must poke Harry Potter, sir, he must wake up!
(p 425 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Bloomsbury edition)

I was about 13 years old when I picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for the first time and I was absolutely amazed and fell in love with it from the first pages. However, now feels that it was more like a Love-Potioned trance ’ for example, I wouldn’t stop for one moment to consider what it all actually meant. To my own defence I could probably say that it was one of the years when I worked so hard to keep at the top of every class I was taking at the time and I was trying to learn enough things at once as it was. I needed to escape some times. Funnily enough it was books of all things that provided my run-aways. I enjoyed doing something smart and not having anyone expecting me to learn anything from it or discuss it. And I happened to get hold of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Well, perhaps it wasn’t just like that. I had to fight for it. Convince some people that I was worthy to get it (yeah, for some reason, it didn’t occur to me that I could just go and buy myself a copy). There was some biting and bribing involved. OK, maybe not bribing, but biting for sure ’ no lying! But that’s not the point.

For the longest time I was only a closet Harry Potter fan. Actually, I didn’t even consider myself a fan ’ I just liked to read and reread the books countless times. I had no one to discuss the books with, nor, frankly, I was really eager to find anyone at first, because those books were mine ’ they were my escape, my world. And I was happy in it, and that was enough for me ’ as I said, it felt a little like being Love-Potioned, at least how I imagine it. I didn’t really want to get anything from the books and didn’t need to understand any deeper meanings, lessons or whatever, I just needed to be able to hide in them. I only had to know that they’d always be there for me, always welcoming me to their world.

I can’t understand ’ still ’ how I woke up from this trance. I get a strong feeling it has something to do with Deathly Hallows, though, for it happened around the time the book was coming out. Those three little thingies seem to have magical powers indeed. Or is it Jo Rowling, rather than them? I don’t know what happened. Once I was poked into life, it just completely surprised me how much other people had “got” from Harry Potter. I wondered for quite some time how on earth I didn’t see that myself, why did I need it shown to me.

Well, part of the reason is that I probably didn’t want to see anything ’ I think, closing one’s eyes and ignoring something is the easiest approach one can choose (I didn’t even realise that I did the very thing Dumbledore, my favourite “teacher”, advised not to!). It requires very little effort (if any) and doesn’t put any burden on you (except guilt perhaps; but, then, if you felt guilty about something, you’d try to amend it and you’d open your eyes, which would fix your mistake ’ better later than never, to my mind).

And, I think, I’ve discovered one other part of it as well. Even when by some blow of clarity I would think that there might be more to these books, I was still alone, so, how could I know that I wasn’t seeing something that wasn’t there. Finally, I discovered something that was there ’ people, other fans, a lot of them, and they were seeing into the books deeper than I could have ever imagined and even bringing the ideas they got from them to life!

So, it was Potter-fans who showed me the true greatness of the books (not just Harry Potter books, but other books as well). Without them, I think, I wouldn’t even have learnt to appreciate the full awesomeness of Dumbledore ’ my favourite “teacher”. The awesome things groups of HP-fans ’ we ’ do: the Harry Potter Alliance, donating to charities and just being examples of nice, understanding, open-minded people. When I think that all these things stem from or are united by a fictional story, it downright hits me ’ !

Yours knocked out,
Justi

P.S. I should perhaps say that no one was hurt in the biting accident, just a library’s copy of Philosopher’s Stone (wait a minute ’ just?). My classmate’s dog bit a tiny corner of it, the library refused to take it back and my whole class then shared it ’ nice, heh? Though, sadly, most of them never got further than that…