CONTEST ENTRY #9

One True Love

It all started in First Grade, when this girl became a nerd. Christmas, 1997, I do recall. She was given a book, but it was not just any book. It was the book that would change her life.

It was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

She was so small, so innocent, and had so much to offer. She could have been the most popular kid in school. She could have attended hundreds of parties by now. But no. Harry Potter grabbed hold of her heart and never let go. She was wholly and irrevocably in love and nothing could get in the way. They were so happy together in those young, halcyon days. By the fifth book's release, she was ready to stand in line for hours in the rain just to get my hand on a copy. She soaked in everything – Harry's Quidditch games, Fred and George's pranks, Ron and Hermione's subtle romantic advances, Hagrid's tragic past… their struggle was hers, and she shared their triumphs.

However, this makes for a very lacking social life. No one wants to party with the girl who spends six nights out of seven on internet forums for her favorite book series, discussing the presence of Nargles in the present-day forests of England. No one wants to gossip with the girl whose only crush was the dorkiest boy in the dorkiest series: Neville Longbottom. No one wants a sleepover with the girl who tried to coax an owl into her garage to try to attach a letter and send it to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry's headmaster when she turned 11.

No, life was different for this girl. She spent most summers alone. She couldn't help it that her small-talk was all Potter-centric, it was her passion. And it expanded. She read frequently and feverishly. Anything she could get her hands on. Books that the librarian called "Young Adult" were too childish. Books couldn't be borrowed from the school library: that place so infested with books for the illiterate. She had to venture to the Big Girl library and read the Animorphs series and the complete works of Avi and Roald Dahl and Louis Sacher. They were her muses, her true loves, closer to her than any peer could be. And she liked it that way.

Friends came and went her whole life, but one was always there for her, always ready to cheer her up at a moment's notice: Harry Potter. Any of the seven in the series could do. They took her away from her high school and into the world that Harry and his friends lived in. The Draco Malfoys of her world were just stupid kids, and she was a valiant Gryffindor, brave and honest and true. There was a whole world in that little book: a world that changed her life forever. From Number 4 Privet Drive to Diagon Alley to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – she followed her real friends.

I was… different back then. Not just different from who I am now, but different than my peers. I try hard to "fit in," to play the roles given to me, but on the inside I just want to curl up and be myself. I want people to like that part of me – the part that would rather read a book than go out, the part that enjoys intellectual conversation instead of asking "How drunk were you?" when speaking to peers. I want to be accepted; fully accepted, unquestioned, loved. It'd be nice to find at least one person – male or female; it doesn't matter – to share everything with.

And people claim to and try to understand, but I know they don't. So I just hide my best friend, my true love. I mask him and push him aside and put up with other people. But when I am alone, or when I am exceptionally upset, I know where to turn. I know who will embrace me with open arms, who will make me feel incalculably better.

That person is – and will always be – Harry Potter.