#8 by s.s. THE CONSTANT CONSTANT

Browsing through stills from the upcoming movie are making me want to poop with excitement. Clicking though pictures of the trio in really nice knit sweaters, and Luna all pale and bloody and Neville in his fat suit, et cetera, I paused on one photo featuring digital renderings of Dobby and Kreature, the house elves. "They're too small!" I thought to myself. Dobby wasn't that tiny in the Chamber of Secrets movie. And then I realized that Dobby looked larger in HPCS because that was seven years ago and Daniel Radcliffe was a little child and I almost barfed.

Because, holy shit, that was seven years ago. Because, after everything, seven years later, here I am. In fifth grade I skipped school to watch the second movie with my best friend and my mom. Seven years later, as an undergraduate student, I am skipping my Friday classes in order to attend the midnight showing with my current best friend. Not much has changed. But actually, yes it has! EVERYTHING has changed--everything except Harry Potter. Besides my immediate family, Harry Potter has been the most consistent factor (like a mathematical Constant) in my life since I was nine years old.

Friends, loves, fads, phases, obsessions, homes, personalities have come and gone as I have developed into an adult over the last ten years. Many of the ideas I thought were central to the core of my identity have changed radically. Almost everything has, really, except for the remaining, ever persistent, ever growing and devotional love for Harry Potter. It's really an extremely comforting thing, to have such a constant in one's life. Harry Potter has always been there for me. That's a cliche. Allow me to explain.

The scene opens on a young girl of about nine, with a tangled ginger braid, freckled and pale skin, transparent eyelashes and weird-looking knees. She's wearing the over-sized khaki shorts and bulky, itchy and hot pale blue polo shirt that signify her attendance to the creepy Lutheran school set in the mosquito-y, boggy marshes of Florida. Or what used to be marshes and is now paved in concrete and strip malls. This girl is me. Or was me. This reminds me of when Harry thinks about his past self, who lived under a cupboard, "as if remembering a younger brother, whom he had lost."

This awkward miniature version of myself was unhappy and taunted in school and only able to breath shallowly because of asthma and allergies and the insufferable humidity of Florida. And where should this dorky, ivory-skinned young lass find solace? Why, in the rainy country of England! With the dark haired, scrawny boy wizard named Harry Potter!  I distinctly remember my dad reading the first chapter of Harry Potter aloud to Michael and I, as we rested our flaxen heads against each of our father's bony shoulders. Michael soon grew frustrated with the mystery of it all ("people in cloaks! who are they? why are they wearing cloaks??")(we had no idea where the book was going) and stormed off. But something about the music and whimsy of JKR's writing captivated me. I decided to be patient, to see where the story was going. And ever since I have found delight and love in the pages of Harry Potter.

Throughout elementary and middle school I hid from the world in Harry Potter. My copies became pathetic travesties of books--the bindings worn away, pages missing, glue failing, in several flaking parts, rubber-banded together. Mom banned me from reading them at one point because that was all I ever did. The space between my bed and my wall was chock-a-block full of crumbling hardcover copies of Harry Potter books--a hiding place soon discovered by my disparaging mother. In my elementary years I went nearly everywhere with a thick tome under my arm. When threatened with the big-toothed boy bullies in school, I was able to ignore them by immersing myself in Harry's story. And, interestingly, a few of those bullies somehow felt the weight of those hardcovers against their hollow skulls.

In high school, my Harry Potter mania increased when I met my Harry Potter soul mate, BFF and blog collaborator, Cassidy. The story is infamous--practically a modern fairytale by now, I should think. What do a bald, gossiping girl and a preppy and self-conscious Diaspora have in common? Nothing detectable by first glance or even by a celebrated psychoanalyzing personality test, that's for sure. Harry Potter was the the commonality, impetus and constant of our friendship. And it remains a constant! Our friendship started from movie stills from Order of the Pheonix, saw us attend the midnight premieres of the last book and sixth movie, and remains strong four (!) years later as we prepare for the second to last movie in the Harry Potter film franchise. (Happy Four Year Friendaversary, Cassidy!)

Still nothing brings me more comfort or joy than rereading the beloved words of the Harry Potter series, or listening to Jim Dale read them to me. It is my ultimate comfort and pleasure to revisit the same words again and again, that still never fail in delighting me and yielding more layers of wit, intelligence, and thematic meaning. The Harry Potter books are the kind worth reading over and over. The kind that can endure ten years of rough love (even if their physical pages and bindings don't). The Harry Potter books are the constant in the mathematical equation that is my life. AND THEY ALWAYS WILL BE. It is insanely comforting, knowing you will always have at least this one good thing always in your life.

I owe a lot to JK Rowling and the Harry Potter series. It helped me survive my childhood, adolesence and adulthood. It has brought me joy for over ten years. We go way back. I don't think I will ever stop loving Harry Potter. In fact, I know I won't. I said it when I was nine and I'll say it at nineteen:

I LOVE HARRY POTTER MORE THAN ALMOST ANYTHING IN LIFE!!!!