H Is for Harry, a History

This is a history. It's a history of how I fell in love.

It was 2000 and I was in college. My best friend and I had to do this project together for our literary theory class. We met at the local library and there was supposed to be one more girl in our group, but she showed up, literally, an hour and a half late. During the time we were waiting for her, my friend started telling me about this book series she was reading.

"You'd love it. It's about this boy who turns out to be a wizard and he goes to a wizard school and has all these adventures."

"Harry Potter?" I replied. "Isn't that a kid's book." I was a serious college student, after all. An English major. I was taking literary theory, for Gods sake.

"Just trust me..."

That day, I checked the first two books in the series out of the library and never looked back.

At the time, only the first four books had been released. Over a year later, my best friend and I stood in line to buy Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at midnight the week before my wedding. I had to hurry up and finish it before Saturday. I didn't want to be standing at the altar wondering what happened to Harry and his friends in the Department of Mysteries.

We went to midnight showings of all the movies and all the book parties. For the release of Deathly Hallows, I managed to convince my husband to dress up with me as Tonks and Lupin. For the Half-Blood Prince movie release, we were Bellatrix and Voldemort.

My husband had never even read the books. He's not a big reader anyway and, after all, they are just kid's books. Even with all my super fandom, I could never convince him to start the series. Sure, he liked the movies and didn't mind dressing up in funny costumes, but actually read a 700-page children's book? No way.

But all that changed when our oldest daughter was born.

I used to read a loud to Elizabeth every night before bed when she was just an infant. We started with Pride and Prejudice and once we got through that, I cracked opened Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We were about 400 pages in, when the book suddenly disappeared from my night stand.

Downstairs, I found my husband with his nose buried in it.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Huh?" he looked up at me and then quickly darted his eyes back down. "Sorry... this book is really good."

Ordinarily, I would have rolled my eyes or given him a sassy, "I told you so." But, instead, I just nodded and grinned as I walked out of the room.

In 2007, we won tickets to attend a Harry Potter book signing and my husband I flew to New York City to meet J.K. Rowling live and in person.

But, when I mentioned the possibility of going to a Harry Potter fan conference at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter this summer, I thought for sure he would think I had finally gone insane. I mean, we were parents now. We shouldn't be planning our vacations around children's books!

"Hmmm..." he said, when I finished telling him about the conference. "That actually sounds like fun."

"Seriously?" I replied. "So you want to go?"

"Hell yeah," he smirked. "I mean, I am a pretty big fan now."

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So what's your history? How did you fall in love with Harry? And how have you spread the good news to others?

-- Lisa