Is Potter a Problem?
I remember reluctantly reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in my twenties, hiding the cover, embarrassed to be studying a children's book. The embarrassment quickly fell away, and I was swept up in the series. I still maintain that it is one of my favorites. However, I wasn’t as intense as some Potter fans because I came to the series later in life. I didn’t dress up or get tattooed.
Image credit "Harry Potter Tattoo" by venturestoanomaly is licensed under CC by 2.0
Okay…I was a little intense. When I had kids, I bought the box set of the series and told them that the only reason they were created was so I could read Harry Potter with them. I made them believe it was their purpose in life.
My son didn’t care. Wizarding was ridiculous compared to Fortnite, tennis, basketball, and exploring the sewer system (that’s a story for another day). My daughter reluctantly agreed to listen to me read the first book. That was three years ago. Little did I know I was creating a new, more intense, Potter superfan.
Her superfandom is such that I wonder if she’s confused the fantasy with reality. Last year she carried a homemade Hogwarts acceptance letter (complete with an official Hogwarts wax seal) everywhere—I’m talking dinner, the car, brushing her teeth, to school. My husband and I worried that she really believed she got in. One weird dude driving a motorcycle could easily abduct her with sweet talk like, “These muggles don’t understand you. Dumbledore is waiting.”
"Hagrid Lookalike on Motorbike and sidecar" by Edmond Wells is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
She owns bedding, pillows, a backpack and lunchbox, popup books, clocks, necklaces, wands, action figures, ornaments, costumes, wall art, clothing, stuffed animals, an invisibility cloak (that didn’t work), a Patronus casting wand (that didn’t work), and the game. We’ve been to the movies and the theme parks. We. Are. Enablers.
She is now on her sixth read through the series, and I still maintain hope that I haven't lost her to the wizarding world forever. Sometimes, at dinner or before bed she will say, "Mom, I need to talk to you." I get excited about the prospect of a real conversation, but she always says something like “I’m still sad about Cedric Diggory.”
The worst of this Potter problem is the audiobooks played on full blast anytime she changes clothes, showers, goes to the bathroom, wakes up, or goes to sleep—virtually every moment she's not reading an actual book. The version my daughter loves is beautifully narrated by Jim Dale (though there is a battle of audiobook narrators among superfans). However, even his lyrical voice starts to grate on my nerves after years on repeat. I didn’t understand that I was inviting this voice and this magical clan to take up so much space in my home.
I asked fellow Potter superfans in my MFA program if my daughter’s behavior called for a trained child phycologist. They absently rubbed at the lightning bolt scars tattooed on their foreheads and assured me that everything would be okay.
As parents, we are supposed to embrace our children's stages of development, but I wonder if this intense devotion counts as a phase or delusion. Maybe when she moves on to a muggle boyfriend, I’ll be begging for this magical chapter of her life to continue.