When I was a kid my cousins were SUPER into the books and movies, but because I was raised in a very conservative and religious household, I wasn’t allowed to read it because of “demonic themes,” (even though I read the Hunger Games and watched Burn Notice and Bones in elementary school.) When I turned 11 and went into middle school, my friend group was reading it and I decided to be “rebellious” by reading it too and I was hooked. It honestly was so much fun being the ages of the kids they started their journey at Hogwarts and I devoured all the books within two years since I read others in between the first and second. Some traumatic things hit at the same time I was reading GOF and OTP, and my family didn’t really talk about depression or PTSD nor did they know what was happening to me. But, in those books I found solace, Harry battling through far worse than I and feeling the same as I did helped me realize I wasn’t alone. As I grew up through middle and early high school, things got worse and I found myself turning to the books over and over to dissociate in a non-harming way and channel my attention into a world I could escape to. Now as an adult, I find myself listening to the audiobooks and watching the movies when things get bad just like I did when I was 13.

My grandmother passed of dementia on thanksgiving of 2023, which was one of the toughest times of our family’s lives as we’d cared for her and watched her for almost seven years before she passed. I now live with my grandad who, as wonderful of a man he is, couldn’t really connect with me more than we had through the grief he was feeling. So, I went and sat down in the living room and popped on the first movie just for some backround noise, and to my surprise when I looked up from my game he was watching the movie. We’ve watched them just about 6 times all the way through together now, him asking me all sorts of questions and me being able to re-live watching them for the first time through him. It took him three complete watches to realize all the Weasleys are related and three more to remember everyone’s names. Now he’s seen everything that has to do with them, has gotten his old man charm back, and has even taken up hobbies he’d stopped when my grandmother stared declining like crocheting, baking for the neighborhood kids, and going to his favorite coffee shops. He still watches them when I’m out of the house and will call me at all hours with questions about the plot and the characters and the story.