Harry Potter

As November 19th approaches and we enter into the final chapter of the Harry Potter films, I have decided that it's time for me to come clean about something.

I'm obsessed with Harry Potter.

Ok so maybe this doesn't come as a surprise to most. I mean first of all lots of people are obsessed with Harry Potter. When I say this to most people this comes as no surprise to them and they're not weirded out.

But I don't think you understand...I'm OBSESSED with Harry Potter. I'll admit that the obsession has calmed down as I've gotten older, but it's always there, waiting to rear its magical head. I'm sure if you're reading this and are one of my close friends or family members, you think you probably grasp the extent of my obsession. You already knew this about me. This blog post isn't news to you whatsoever.

If only you knew how deep the magical waters run.

As a disclaimer, I'd just like to say that I am FULLY aware that I am not even close to the level of obsession of some HP fans. That's what I'd like to call borderline nuts (although after this blog I'm pretty sure most of you are going to feel that way about me). But I'm pretty sure I'm fairly high up.

The reason people don't fully know my obsession is because I'm selective in what I tell people. I tell a certain anecdote to this person, a different one to another. It makes me feel like I'm being honest about my Potter Past if I spread the knowledge to a vast number of people. I think people in my younger days were quite aware of it, but at some point in high school I learned that this particular obsession was best kept under wraps and played down a little bit. But I've decided it's high time that I proudly share with the world...Shannon's Potter Passion.

1. This first one is going to be lengthy, mostly because it was the transition into my obsession. You see the obsession didn't begin immediately. I read the first book when I was in the sixth grade, and immediately I was hooked. But hooked on a book for me is not the same as obsessed. I get hooked on TONS of different book series. So immediately making my mom take me to the bookstore to buy me the next book in a series as soon as I finish the one prior actually was fairly common occurrence in my life. But the real obsession started with Book 4. The first two books were already out when I started reading, and luckily for me I finished the second book the DAY the third book was released. At this point HP was really popular but didn't have an insane following like it does now, so getting Book 3 on release day was fairly easy. Buuuut then I had to wait.

Sixth grade was the one miracle year that JK Rowling released two books within a year of each other. Book 4 was released July 8, 2000. I had preordered my copy from Amazon, but I wasn't counting down the days or anything. In fact, I had completely forgotten the book was even coming, or I wouldn't have made such a huge error in judgement.

I was moving from Massachusetts to Virginia later that month so one of my best friends and I had a sleepover at my house to hang out. We had hung out all day, and that night, while we were watching a movie, my dad says to me "Oh by the way Shan, this came in the mail for you today."

It was Book 4. How could I have possibly forgotten? What was I supposed to do now? I had a friend to entertain for at least 18 more hours! I pretended to be nonchalant about wanting to immediately read it, but inside I was experiencing PURE AGONY. So as the movie progressed, I casually started reading. I mean it was a movie I had already seen. No big deal. But the real problem came after the movie ended. I couldn't just ignore my friend, so I was forced to pause my reading.

Until that night. When I was sure my friend was asleep, I grabbed my book and ran to the bathroom...where I sat and read for at least an hour. It would have been longer, except my friend was NOT actually asleep and eventually knocked on the door to make sure I wasn't dead.

At this point you would think I would have surrendered and decided to wait until the next day to keep reading. NOPE. When I actually was sure she was asleep, I went back and read until almost 4 am (which is sort of intense for a 12 year old).

Unfortunately for me, my friend's parents happened to be good friends with my family, and they invited me to spend the next TWO nights at their house for our "final hurrah." I should have been so stoked, this had never happened before.

But inside I was PANICKED. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO READ HP 4 WHILE AT SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE?! But then I found my consellation prize...my friend and her sister had camp in the mornings, and her mom marketed it as "while you get to sleep in they'll be at camp, and then by the time they come home you'll be up!"

FALSE. I WOULD BE READING ALL MORNING AND SAVORING MY PRECIOUS HOURS OF ALONE TIME!

And that's how I read all of HP 4 in four days and three nights...while at a never ending sleepover.

2. Things took a turn for the crazy after the fourth book came out. (SPOILER ALERT) I mean Voldemort was BACK. WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!? And unfortunately for the world, Book 5 wasn't released until June 21, 2003 (here's another reason you know I'm obsessed, I am recalling these dates from memory)...THREE YEARS after the biggest cliffhanger of all time. So what's a girl to do? Turn to the world of fanfiction. SHAMEFUL I know. Yes I read it all the time. ....yes, I wrote my own. YES, it IS on the internet, in a SECRET LOCATION. Only some of my friends know about this. In fact I think the only people who have read these fanfictions are the people I was friends with my freshman year of high school, and Dan. And that's ONLY because my stupid friend Nina had to OPEN HER MOUTH and tell him about it one night last year. And my answer is no, absolutely NOT, I will never post a link to it on this blog (and no one who knows it better do it either), I value my pride thank you very much.

3. One of my fans from Quebec liked one of my fanfictions so much that she translated the entire story (probably about 6,000 words total...it astounds me to now realize that in total I have probably written over 100 pages of HP fanfiction) into French. That's also online.

4. In the 7th grade I had a series of HP websites I created (this is the only reason I now know basic HTML and can write that on my resume) with a friend I MET ON THE INTERNET. I think her name was Jenny. She wrote stories too.

5. I attended a special early screening of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (the movie) because I won a contest I found online. Everyone there (inluding me) was dressed up.

6. I have two copies of the 5th book because I ordered one copy from Amazon, but it took forever to get delivered, so my mom ended my agony by going and buying another copy for me. Why wasn't I at the midnight release party? Because I was SUPER grounded. I can say without question it was my worst punishment ever. When she came back with it, I did not leave my room until I had finished it. She even delivered my dinner on a tray (this had nothing to do with the grounding).

7. Mugglenet.com became my ultimate HP source VERY early in the website's history. It was my internet homepage for about 5 years. So when they posted an entry calling for writers to submit writing samples to become part of a special HP writing team for the website to help them create a new project (what I think was ultimately going to become some sort of RPG, but it never ended up happening), I obviously did it. And I got selected.

8. I STILL own a HP trivia game. It only has questions about the first four books because that's when it was released. I subsequently bought/asked for ZERO HP related board games, because they were too easy for me and I always beat everyone, which only I found fun.

9. In my life time I have displayed 8 different Harry Potter posters on my wall.

10. I have a golden snitch keychain.

11. My sophomore year of high school, long before any whispers of a Harry Potter theme park started circling, my friend and I had designed an entire theme park devoted to HP. She was the engineer, I was the concept designer. There are actual documents in existence that contain all of this information.

12. I have written and mailed a fan letter to JK Rowling. It was written on Harry Potter stationary.

13. I have also written and mailed a fan letter to Tom Felton, the actor who plays Draco Malfoy. He responded.

14. My Junior Year of High School I started collecting the books. I now own all 7 American Editions in Hardback, all 7 British Editions in Hardback, the 5th and 7th British editions in paperback, the 6th British Adult Edition in paperback, and the 3rd French Edition in paperback. I own TWO copies of the supplemental "textbooks" JK Rowling wrote for charity. I own TWO copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I own TWO copies of JK Rowling's biography (why I own two of these I have no idea...no wait I do it's because people give them to me as gifts because they think there's no way I could already own them). I also own a book called Unlocking the Secrets of Harry Potter, a highly intellectual book (not even kidding, it was a semi-challenging read) that was released before the 7th book came out, which shows how Harry Potter relates to alchemy, patterns JK Rowling uses, and ways to predict what will happen in the 7th book.

15. I am not at ALL done collecting books. I fully expect to add complete editions from other countries once I have money/a shelf to put them on.

16. Harry Potter related pictures have been the wallpaper for my computer FAR more than anything else has...inlcuding pictures of my friends and family.

17. I was at Governor's School for the release of the 6th book, and I was nervous about getting the book shipped to me because I didn't fully understand how the mail worked. We weren't allowed to leave the U of R campus EVER, so I didn't know how I was going to get my copy of the book. This was easily solved though, because the release of the book was the day before Parent's Day, which was when your parents could come and take you off campus for the day. I had the book shipped to my house, made them bring it when they came, and for the day my family decided to go to the Water Park in King's Dominion. My family spent the day riding water rides. I spent the day reading on a pool chair.

18. The day they announced the release date for the 7th book (my freshman year of college), I made a countdown that I hung next to my bed and faithfully crossed off every single night. Yes, every single night. Even the nights of insane parties.

19. That was not the first time I created a countdown. I also had one for Book 5 and Book 6. That's why it felt natural to continue in college.

20. The amount of HP "stuff" I have is actually absurd. I'm going to try and list it from memory but I am POSITIVE I will forget things: A Harry action figure, a Voldemort action figure, a wizard's hat, all the books I previously listed, all the movies, four different HP "journals" (most have HP stories written in them), two packages of HP bumper stickers, a set of HP stationary which I eventually ran out of so I had to buy MORE HP stationary, one of those "friend books" that used to be really popular where a friend chooses a sticker and goes through the book and writes all their favorite stuff based on the page's category...HP style, a HP snow globe, HP book ends, a HP Christmas Wreath Sarah Smith made me for Christmas, 4 HP glasses representing the different Hogwarts houses, a butterbeer mug and a beer goblet from HP world, a HP Quidditch t-shirt, soundtracks for the first 3 movies, a photoshopped picture Tjaden gave me as a Christmas gift of me and Ron Weasley, and more but I seriously cannot remember it all.

21. I discovered Harry and the Potters when I was 15. I thought they were hilarious. Two years later I drove an hour away to see Harry and the Potters perform live (they're horrible).

22. I was Hermione for Halloween...more than one time.

23. My AIM screen name is Lionsforthecup...that is a Harry Potter reference.

24. The seventh book came out the first year I was a Summer Friendship Director. When we were planning our trips, we had to find a good weekend for the Middle School lock-in. This was an event that lasted from Friday night until Saturday morning. I pretty much knew nothing about Summer Friendship my first year, never having participated, so I trusted the returning director when she said we should do it July 20. But even in this meeting, I stipulated that should we plan it for that weekend because it wasn't going to work ANY OTHER WEEKEND (looking back I would have immediately vetoed that because we could have done it other weekends, but I was young and foolish) that I was going to LEAVE in the middle of the lockout to go get my book at midnight. I don't think any of the directors believed me (maybe if they had read this blog post they would have). But come July 20 at 11:30 pm, I PEACED OUT and did not return until after 1 am (that's how long waiting in line took). They were all SO MAD. But I couldn't have cared less, because I told everyone upfront that I would leave if we planned the lock-in for that weekend.

I didn't start reading book 7 until 4 am, when our planned activities ended and the kids watched movies. I read for about a half an hour, but then when I realized that no one had cleaned anything up, and I was going to potentially be stuck at work for HOURS after the lock-in ended just to clean up. So I decided why not take this time where we don't have to entertain the kids to clean up so we could leave as soon as the lock-in ended. I proposed this idea to the other directors, who said no. I was LIVID. So I cleaned EVERYTHING myself. When the lock-in was over, and they went to clean, I politely stood there and told them I had already done everything and that I was ready to leave. I think they were shocked. I think they had planned on cleaning and then maybe hanging out or getting breakfast (because they specifically said so). I said absolutely not, left, went home, and read the entire book. I subsequently made Joe Scott hang out with me as soon as I finished it because I needed to talk about it and no one was done yet. Since he sucks and doesn't read he let me explain the entire book to him. It was extremely therapeutic.

Here's a picture from that lock-in. Yes, I wore this the entire night (this was my prof pic for two months):


25. I was OBSESSED with Tom Felton for a good two years. Computer wallpaper, stalked his website, you name it. When I was 15 I even had a crush on a guy from my church who I didn't even KNOW because he looked so much like Tom Felton. We called him TF LAL (Tom Felton Look-a-like). All of my friends knew what this name meant and who it referred to. And through clever sleuthing on all of our parts, we found out where he went to school, what his name was, and what INSTRUMENT he played in band (don't worry it wasn't that stalkery. I just asked him what his name was one time at Youth Group and my friends happened to know him from middle school). Sometimes I still FB his name to see if he still looks like Tom Felton (he doesn't).

26. One time I bought a regular person shirt just because I knew it would match my wizard's hat.

27. I discovered in college that I could name every single chapter of the first book in order from memory. This wasn't something I tried to memorize, that's just how many times I had read the book. I realized this one day in Music Theory when someone asked me what the first chapter of Book 1 was called (The Boy Who Lived). I told them, and when they couldn't believe I just KNEW it, I decided to figure out if I knew all of the chapters in that book from memory. I did. I know a lot of the chapter names from other books, but I don't have all of them and the order committed to memory (and really that's only because I've never tried).

28. When Chorale was in England in July 2009 we stayed at a hotel in London about a mile away from King's Cross. I realized this our first day there as we DROVE by the station (I obviously screamed). I immediately made plans to visit as soon as possible. Our only free time was the next morning, although free time is a loose term, because we had to be ready to get on the bus by 10:30am. So I decided that even though I was jetlagged, I was going to leave the hotel at 8 to walk to King's Cross and go see Platform 9 3/4. Four other people came with me. It was AWESOME (and was ALSO my FB profile picture for about two months).

29. In summer 2008 the Kingetts' favorite game was secret kill. The way you played this was you would say to a sibling "Hey Jacob, come here I have to tell you something." Then he'd come up, expecting to hear a great story, and you'd whisper in his ear "AVADA KEDEVRA!" Annnnd then he was dead. This game was seriously SO FUNNY.


30. I attended the opening day of the HP theme park in Orlando, FL, as you can read about in this blog.

31. At the Overtones 2010 Spring concert, the theme was "In the Hot Seat", and throughout the show they'd pull questions out of a hat that the audience had written. One of them was for my friend David. I DIDN'T WRITE IT. The question read "David Rea...who REALLY killed Dumbledore?" His first response? "Who wrote this? Shannon Kingett was this from you?"

32. In conducting fall of Junior year we had to bring batons to class. We were partnered for some kind of activity and we were supposed to watch our partner conduct. For some CRAZED reason Ash and I were allowed to be partners. You can obviously assumed what occured. Neither of us conducted. We just had a wizard's duel.

This list is obviously to be continued, considering I still have a full life left to live full of HP glory. If you remember more stories or stuff I have, please, comment, or email me, or text me, because I want to remember them and currently don't.

The one thing I can't convey is how much I knew/know about this series. I have a pretty crazy memory and an affinity for learning about anything and everything, especially things I find interesting...so the wealth of HP knowledge I acquired and then stored in my brain is probably terrifying for some people. I hope this blog made you laugh and not convince you that I need serious therapy. And maybe I'm not the only one who has this insane obsession!! So if you too have a secret HP past I encourage you to share it with the WORLD!

Sarah Davis is cool.