I slipped sideways into the Harry Potter fandom when I was 11 or 12 years old, during the long wait for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to come out. The first piece of fan fiction I ever read was—in retrospect—dreadful: bold red text dribbled line by insipid line down a lavender page. But at the time it was revelatory. Before that, fantasy had seemed to me a lonely pastime, one that became increasingly shameful to me as my classmates aged out of make-believe and said goodbye to their imaginary friends.
But I still needed those things. I was stuck between childhood and adolescence. I lived in my head because I didn’t know how to live anywhere else. The online universe that grew up around Harry Potter was made by and for fans like me.
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