Growing up, I will be the first to admit that I was not exactly one of the cool kids. I was friendly enough and I had a couple of friends, but I did not fit in with the popular kids. I wore dresses and played in the dirt. I liked the Spice Girls and N*Sync, but I loved to go fishing with my family. I never connected with the girls in school who wanted to gossip about which boy was cute, because I was too busy playing outside to care. I always had a passion for reading. However, there is one series that will always hold a special place in my heart, and that is Harry Potter.

The first time I opened up J.K. Rowling’s "Harry Potter's and the Sorcerer's Stone" I was in the fifth grade. I was new to a small school where most of the kids had known each other since Wee Care and therefore, it made it hard to get into a circle of friends. However, I loved to read, so any chance I was able to go to the library, I would be maxing out the number of books I was able to carry out. This brings us back to The Sorcerer’s Stone, from the opening line “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much” I became hooked. I read through line after line, losing myself for hours on end. I read that book in a day and knew I needed to read the next and the next, and well, you get it.

I felt like I was there in Rowling’s book, and I wanted desperately to be in the magical world that was and is Harry Potter. It was something about the way she described everything, it felt new and comforting at the same time. I felt a connection to the characters that many books I loved dearly failed in comparison. I felt a connection to Harry, Hermione, and Ron for being the loner, the nerd; the outcast. I knew the loneliness these characters felt, that many of the characters felt. This yearning to belong in the world and to be accepted in the world around them. However, as the books progressed, they all learned that no matter what, they had each other. I felt that way too about my friends, even in the darkest times of my life.

The love of Harry Potter has never left me from same year as I read the first book. I went as Harry Potter for Halloween as a kid and later on in high school, you would find me dressed up as a Hogwart’s student for the release of the "Deathly Hallows". I even have signed fake autographs in some of my books, pretending they were from Rowling, herself to me (I was eleven and disappointed I did not get an acceptance letter to Hogwarts).This past summer, you would have found me in tears when my boyfriend brought home a copy of the "Cursed Child". I have read every book in the series, more times than I can remember and yet, each every time I read them, I still lose myself in each word. I take something new out of each and every chapter.

Harry Potter taught me that we all struggle with something, but we can get through it all, with patience, love, and understanding. That it is okay, that we are not like everyone else, and that is what makes us who were are. The world is not as dark as we let it get.

So, even though I never received my acceptance letter to Hogwarts, thank you, J.K. Rowling for reminding me “after all this time” that “happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.”