Harry Potter and…Me!

Alright y’all – Harry Potter. I have had a book blog for over 3 years and have yet to write a single full post about Harry Potter. UNACCEPTABLE. That changes now. Get ready for a quick overview of my life with HP and, also, one of the cutest stories ever about me and my husband!

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

I have been obsessed with HP since I read Sorcerer’s Stone when I was in third grade and borrowed it from my friend (and was forever scarred against reading in the bathtub because I dropped it in the water and had to tell my mom so she could buy my friend a replacement). Anyways, and then I grew up alongside Harry and Ron and Hermione and the rest. Like, literally. The books came out as I grew up and I went to midnight release parties for them all (including the 6th one, when I was on a cross country trip with my whole family, and one best friend, and we all went to a block party in downtown St. Louis, MO where we knew no one and had to drive back again in the morning to get the book from a local bookshop because they had run out the night before). Anyways, the final one was released my senior year of high school. So yea, I legitimately grew up alongside them – the series defined my youth and adolescence.

Thankfully, I found a partner who loves it all just as much as I do. In fact, we celebrated our 30th birthdays/5th wedding anniversary with a trip (our first, but hopefully not our last) to Harry Potter World! (I added some photos below, in case you want to see them – it was everything!) And last year we did the cutest thing ever (get ready): we read the series out loud together! Yup. Every night before bed we’d read a chapter out loud. It was mostly me reading, but he took over any time I was feeling sick or started to cry about an emotional part (which happened a not-insignificant number of times). It is one of my favorite things that we’ve ever done together, to date. Not only did we get to spend hours revisiting and talking about a world we both loved, but it helped us be intentional about putting aside time to spend together, in the moment, [almost] every day.

In fact, we loved the experience so much that after we finished the series, we also read the books in The Hogwarts Library: Quidditch Through the Ages, The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. And we decided to keep the tradition going this year by jumping into my husband’s favorite childhood series. No spoilers (I’ll make a post about it when we’re finished), but it’s been really awesome to see how excited he’s getting about re-reading these books together. And, as a general book nerd, this is some of the best couples bonding I could ever have imagined.

So, I hope you enjoyed my addition to the myriad HP blog posts out there, our adorable little reading tradition story, and, now some photos from our trip last March (please note Hugh’s eyes in the last one – they make me laugh every time I look at it):

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Share with me! What are some of your Harry Potter memories/stories? (Like the time I had a marathon of movies 1-4 and made matching shirts with my friends to prepare for the midnight premier of Order of the Phoenix.) What parts get you emotional? (For me: when Peeves salutes Fred and George as they tell him to “give her hell from us” and leave school, Dobby’s death, when the house elves join in the Battle of Hogwarts, and Mrs. Weasley’s “not my daughter, you bitch” moment, among many others.) What House are you/your partner in? (We’re, obviously, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.) Which book is your favorite? (We both agree – Half-Blood Prince, followed by Prisoner of Azkaban.)