𝔸𝕝𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕋𝕚𝕞𝕖

Playdate

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You liked the series as a child—truly you did.

The word like might have been an understatement. It was a well-known fact among your family that you went a bit crazy for the movies (and later on, the books) as soon as you drank in the story of Sorcerer's Stone.

Born in the late 1990s, your family had already accrued some of the movies, and when you were old enough, you watched them as often as possible. You'd always been fascinated with the idea of magic, and to watch an average boy learn he's a magical child, famous in the wizarding world, mesmerized you.

Sometime during middle school, you discovered your mother had some of the books.

You flew through the pages faster than you'd ever read anything before, absorbing one book after the next within a short manner of days. When you finished the fifth novel, you were horrified to find that the next one wasn't even out yet. That was one of your easiest memories to recall, you moaning and groaning to various family members that you had to wait. Which, at the time, seemed like a fate worse than death.

The story of Harry Potter was entrancing enough that you revisited the stories over the years as you grew up, rereading them whenever the feeling arrived. You watched the movies as they came out too, some of them more religiously than others. When you'd gotten older, you found yourself reading the books less and less, settling for the films—even though you knew how much the adaptations left out.

However, growing up sheltered made for a naive and innocent girl; it took several years before you started realizing how much was wrong within the Harry Potter universe. When those rose-tinted glasses finally shattered, the neverending list of plot holes and inconsistencies practically screamed in your face, but that wasn't all. Society and characters within the stories behaved in ways that disgusted you, and while this was the work of someone's imagination, it didn't sit well with you.

Dumbledore's manipulation and control over Harry and his childhood; the lack of mental health and care (at least, as far as you could see); ableism toward squibs, slavery of house elves; antisemitism regarding goblins; the way lycanthropy was depicted as a disgusting disease, symbolizing diseases such as HIV and AIDs.

You were probably so upset regarding the latter considering how much you adored Remus Lupin's character. You couldn't stand the idea of him being mistreated for his lycanthropy—especially given that he had been turned against his will. But still, the bad reputation that came with being a werewolf persisted.

And don't get yourself started on the many, many flaws within the magical system. There were already a multitude of spells for wizards and witches to use to ease their daily lives, and considering that practically anybody could create new spells, you wondered how the hell there could still be any problems.

Why did Harry never find a way to cure his eyesight? How come poverty and financial classes still existed? So many things could be conjured and fixed with the wish of a wand—so why were there still so many issues within the universe of Harry Potter?

When you spent your time being overtly critical, you had to remind yourself it had been too long since you'd read the books—and considering that was a given even in your past life, you didn't know if you could truly trust your memories. There was a strong likelihood you'd forgotten about laws and restrictions, so maybe there were reasons behind these holes in the story.

It never changed how disturbed you were to be stuck here, though—you found yourself so irritable at the situation sometimes that you never thought about when you were here, or who you may come across.