I'm a what?

Part 1) Books

In 1999, a small girl pestered her father because she had nothing else to do. The father did not get irritated as she pulled on his hand, forcing him to pay attention to her. He put on some Yanni as he knew that would calm her down. As he scrolled through websites on Internet Explorer, he found a site called baazee.com. It was selling some book that had to do with magic. He thought to himself, ‘This might be a good addition to our collection’, and bought it immediately.

When it reached their residence, the girl pounced upon the package, not bothering to keep the bubble wrap. A mistake, as she would realize later in life. She picked up the book and read the title.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Intrigued probably wasn’t the right word. She was barely six years old, but still excited at the idea of new books. She started reading the book, and the rest was history.

The little girl’s name was Varshini Ramaraj.

(Duh! I mean I wouldn’t talk about another random person now, would I?)

Honestly though, Harry Potter has always been an integral part of my childhood. Once I was done with the first book, it was natural for me to go asking for the next book, and the one after that, and so on.

When the first movie came out, I was obviously irritated with the change in name, but still decided to drag my family to the movie. Thankfully, my parents are the cool kind who loved the books and movies themselves as well. I still remember a school friend of mine sat with his family two rows behind ours. We spent the whole intermission complaining about the lack of Peeves and so much more.

I had moved from playing Age of Empires to playing Harry Potter PC games. The first three are still my favorite out of all of them.

I still remember crying over the fact that we couldn’t see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in the theatre due to my sister having exams. And when hers were done, they were out of the movies. 

Now, I can catch it whenever I want to, but back then, it was almost a travesty.

Fast-forward to the time Preeti and I were reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince together (Don’t read ahead if you haven’t read the book yet! :P)

We were taking turns to read it on the computer. She was talking to someone, which meant I got more than the scheduled time to read the book. This also meant that I reached the scene on the Tower before Preeti did. I was scared as Harry was paralyzed, invisible under his cloak. As Dumbledore tried to reason with Draco about how he wasn’t a murderer, how he could still come to the Light side. As Draco almost put down his wand. As Snape came in and shattered all those possibilities. As Snape killed the person who had put his full trust in him.

I literally (kid you not, literally) fell off my chair and started bawling. My parents thought something really bad had happened and came rushing in, and so did my sister. I, then, made the biggest blunder that I would come to regret.

“SNAPE KILLED DUMBLEDOOOOREEEEEEEEE!”

My parents realized I wasn’t talking about people in my real life and walked away. Preeti, however, had a shocked look on her face. She later told me she was still in the cave and Dumbledore was drinking the cursed liquid.

Part 2) Hinny Fanfiction

In my eight standard, I found this site called mugglenet.com. I think I had gone searching for a Wizarding recipe and found myself there. There was some link pertaining to fan stuff and I clicked on the link to find that it was a portal to something called ‘fanfiction’.

Of course, Harry/Ginny was life to me right then. I saw multiple links with different pairings written down.

I literally went ‘eww’ at Draco/Hermione back then (Ironic, considering how much I love them now). There was ‘Harry/Luna’ which I was vaguely interested in. I, obviously, went to the Harry/Ginny link. I found 97 stories based on the nineteen years in between, extra stories during the books, stories written after the epilogue.

I found a random author mention SIYE, from where I went to Sink Into Your Eyes. (It still exists and is cute as ever.) This was a Harry/Ginny fanfiction site only and did not have more than R-rated fanfictions.  I still remember some of those fanfictions were so well-written.

Part 3) Everything under the sun

Everyone knows I’m a huge nerd. In my tenth grade, I was actually unbearable. I stopped reading fanfiction so that I could study (Don’t ask.) So when I got back to it in my eleventh grade, I found a few changes in my own mind regarding ships.

(For those who don’t know, ships are a certain pairing you like together. Like Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Draco/Apple, you know?)

I realized that there was so much more than canon, and went to the dark side, so to speak. Draco/Hermione, Draco/Ginny, Harry/Hermione and so on. I don’t remember when it was that I started reading slash. But Harry/Draco was definitely my first slash ship.

I was in this group which discussed a lot of Harry Potter, and I found my first nemesis there. She was the reason I was fighting for my friendship with my dear friend Sue, and I didn’t know what to do.

Six months later, we were best friends. This is the person I tell everyone about, my dearest Maria.

Part 4) Me right now

I love saying that the gateway fandom for every person is Harry Potter. It’s the one fandom that everyone likes, has discussions about and finding new head canons every day. A song I know applies to this so well:

All of me loves all of you

All your curves and all your edges

All your perfect imperfections

This is because everyone knows that the books aren’t that perfect. The movies definitely aren’t. I am sure of the fact that every time it comes on TV, I shall watch it. I will always complain about Dumbledore being an ass in the Goblet of Fire (movie). I will always regret that Harry didn’t contact Sirius through the mirror in the Order of the Phoenix. I will always hate what a mess they made of Ginny in the Half Blood Prince movie. And the ending of the Deathly Hallows movie never happened.

Despite all of this, I love Harry Potter enough to still write fanfiction about it, read loads of it and write roughly 1200 words on the subject right now.

I leave you with the theme that everyone recognizes. Listen to it and revel in all the memories. Speaking of memories, do you have any specific HP-themed once? Leave them in the comments below!!