So much of myself I owe to the love affair that began in the fourth grade and will continue long after I’ve seen the final chapter on the big screen. They are all real to me. Hogwarts is real to me. It was a real place to escape to as a shy child without friends, and Harry was a real person to learn from when I became a first generation college student. I consulted him and found comfort in his tales of what it was like to enter an entirely different world with no family, a world far away at a school full of children who knew all along they would be there one day, just as their parents had been.  Thanks to you, there’s no longer a choice between the path of Peter Pan or the path of Wendy Darling. Growing up does not mean forgetting, and Hogwarts is always a place I am able to go home to, no matter my age, for the world you created is one in which we are always welcome, one in which there will always be a special place for every one of us. And in return, we will keep you alive always in the part of out hearts that, if not for you, would have never existed in the first place.

 So much of myself I owe to the love affair that began in the fourth grade and will continue long after I’ve seen the final chapter on the big screen. They are all real to me. Hogwarts is real to me. It was a real place to escape to as a shy child without friends, and Harry was a real person to learn from when I became a first generation college student. I consulted him and found comfort in his tales of what it was like to enter an entirely different world with no family, a world far away at a school full of children who knew all along they would be there one day, just as their parents had been. 

Thanks to you, there’s no longer a choice between the path of Peter Pan or the path of Wendy Darling. Growing up does not mean forgetting, and Hogwarts is always a place I am able to go home to, no matter my age, for the world you created is one in which we are always welcome, one in which there will always be a special place for every one of us. And in return, we will keep you alive always in the part of out hearts that, if not for you, would have never existed in the first place.