It's been a long run and we are ending this journey the way we started it: together.
This was me, 6 years ago after moving to South Bend, Indiana.
I picked up a paperback copy of your first book at Navy Pier in Chicago and I was instantly drawn in to your magical world. I remember sitting in my bed with a flashlight well past my bedtime as I imagined you defeating the Dark Lord on your own with nothing but LOVE.
You taught me to be brave, to be strong, to be loyal--traits I still carry with me everywhere I go. But most importantly, you taught me to survive. When you battled the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets to defend Ginny, my mother battled cancer. On a trip to Disney World, my mother and I rekindled our relationship--healing our wounds just like the Phoenix tear.
When you lost Sirius in behind the veil, I moved away from the only place and people I had ever known. And just as you mourned the loss of your family, I mourned my own grandmother, grandfather, and uncle.
Whenever your green eyes were mentioned, I believed a little bit more each day in my own green eyes. Green eyes that at one point I was ashamed of.
When you stood up for Dumbledore after his death, battling Snape and Death Eaters, so did I stand up in court to defend myself from a boyfriend who was abusing me.
And finally, when you realized that the dead never truly leave us, I found a hand written note from my Uncle John in one of your books--the last book he gave me before he died.
I mimicked the way you chose your friends, choosing those who are so alike me it's scary, the three of us like you, Hermione and Ron, making up three equal parts of the same whole. I picked friends who shared my passion for the written word, who shared my passion for you, who--like myself--had been changed somehow by your adventures.
Before my first EVER Midnight Premiere - HP and the Goblet of Fire
You have been the most consistent thing in my life for the last 12 years. And in watching you go, I'm letting myself go a little bit. My childhood, like yours, has ended. But, the magic still lives on. I have found my own deathly hallows: the arms of friends and family who love me, the heart of a man who I adore, and the power to control my own life, to make my own way. And these have made me as master not of death, but of LIFE.
And where ever I go, I'll take you with me whether it's telling my children the Tale of the Three Brothers as I tuck them into bed, quoting Dumbledore in my college essays, or secretly wishing I had a wand of my own.
So thank you, Harry Potter, for making me who I am; For teaching me it's not a burden to be who I am; For giving me the will and want to read; For being there for me whether I return on page or in film to welcome me home.
I cannot promise where I will be in five years, but I hope that when I am old and gray rocking in a chair with your book open in my lap, my child, my husband, my grandchild looks at me and asks "After all this time?"
to which I will respond as solemnly as Snape did:
