Saturday, July 18, 2015

Harry Potter Month: Fandom in the Family

Harry Potter Month is hosted by Faith at Geeky Zoo Girl and Micheline at Lunar Rainbows Reviews. This awesome event runs all through July, and you can find more information about it here.

For those of you who may not know already, Ally and Melissa, my fellow contributors here at the blog, are my cousins. We're currently also sort of rivals for the Harry Potter Month House Cup—Ally is in Slytherin, while Melissa and I are in Ravenclaw. So a little family competition has broken out, with all three of us upping our blogging game a notch because we are a family of very, very dedicated Harry Potter fans.

A family memory that I'll always treasure is being able to watch Ally and Melissa grow up into the awesome young adults they are today. As avid readers and all-around nerds, we have quite a few shared HP-related moments together. The other day, Ally wrote about how she and her younger brother got in trouble with their parents for yelling, "Bloody hell, Harry!" in public when they were little. I vividly remember that incident because I was there. In fact, Ally and Denis were having a contest to see who could imitate Ron saying, "Bloody hell, Harry" the best, and I was designated the judge until the aforementioned parents shut the contest down.

My cousins and I have also spent immeasurable hours playing the Lego Harry Potter video games. While we had a ton of fun just because the games are so amazingly designed, we got so, so many laughs from our pitiful teamwork. No matter how we paired off, there was always some kind of infighting, whether it was over who was going to get to play as Sirius and Lupin (probably the biggest point of contention) or who was going to get to drive the Flying Car. There was constant usage of wands against each other, too, which often brought progress in whatever level we were playing to a screeching halt. But this was all in the spirit of good fun, and, somehow, we managed to complete both games to 100%, lol!

The HP family fandom moment that's closest to my heart took place on the day that Ally, Melissa, and the rest of their family left New York to drive down to their new home in Florida. I wanted to give them a going away present, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had just released. I hurried to the new neighborhood bookstore that had recently opened and was very fortunate to snag their one remaining copy of DH. We all reunited when I moved to FL the following year, and we've continued fangirling over HP together ever since.

12 comments:

  1. Awwwww, that's so cute! It's awesome when you have family who understands your fandoms. My sister is who I always geek out with.
    That's hilarious about the infighting in Lego HP. I'm so bad at video games that if I played with someone, I'm sure I would end up killing them by accident (if not on purpose) lol.

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    1. I'm not a gamer at all, but I absolutely LOVE playing Lego HP! In addition to playing through the main events in the books/movies, you also get to explore Hogwarts, which was one of my favorite things about both games. :D

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  2. This is such a touching, heartwarming piece of memory you shared, Lee, and I so enjoyed getting this insight into you and your cousins love for the world of Harry Potter. The experiences you've shared thanks to it are so happy and I really love the fact your were the judge of that contest- how perfectly brilliant.
    And it reminds me that I totally need to get onto finishing the first Lego HP game. I was playing it with my brother but I'm guessing I'll have to go solo, now, which is horribly sad. But hopefully it continues to be fun on solo player.
    xx

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    1. This ended up being such a sentimental post to write, because sometimes it's really hard for me to accept how fast my cousins have grown up and how many years have gone by. It truly seems like it was only yesterday when I was taller than all of them, lol.

      And I've played both Lego HP games by myself on occasion, and to me they were still enjoyable, although playing with someone else definitely adds so much more to the experience.

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  3. Oh it's so great to get to share the HP love with others! I know Zane and I love playing the HP Lego Game too and it's absolutely more fun to play with more than one person. Though of course it's HP Lego so playing it alone is fun as well. I was hoping playing the game would help us win house points ;) I love a bit of friendly competition and I did notice that Ally was in a different house than you and Melissa. I have told you before that I thought Zane and I would be in Ravenclaw too but Pottermore placed us in Hufflepuff so we've embraced that LOL. I'm enjoying this month so much with rereading the books and re-watching all the movies. I have been enjoying all the HP love everyone has shared and all the memories as well. Thanks so much for sharing :D

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    1. Hehe, I was also hoping that playing Lego HP would count towards House points because that would be how I'd be earning most, if not all, of mine, lol! That's so awesome that you and Zane play Lego HP together; I love how the games appeal to all ages, and just how HP is something so special to so many families. :D

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  4. This is so cool. I love when multiple people in families enjoy Harry Potter. My entire family likes Harry Potter too, or at the very least has read it. My aunt, Gramma and cousin have been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida 4 or 5 times together. And every time a movie came out, Gramma gathered all the cousins, aunts, and uncles and took us to see them. That kind of gives you an idea the kind of fans we are. :D

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    1. That's so wonderful that there's so much HP love in your family! :D The one thing that we haven't done as a family yet is go to Wizarding World of HP together; Ally and her brother went on separate trips with friends, but one of these days, we all have to go in our big group, lol.

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  5. This is so sweet! I have a younger sister but there's a really big age gap so we didn't really get to share our love of Harry Potter until the later books came out. Now though we're both huge fans, even though she's a Gryffindor and I'm definitely a Slytherin at heart!

    My parents have read the books too, and my friends are big fans too, but other than blogging friends (especially as part of things like HP MOTW and HP Month), I probably share the HP fandom love with my other half the most. Although he's generally a gamer rather than a reader, HP is one of the book series we both adore, which leads to plenty of fun hours discussing the books, favourite characters, opinions on fanon and canon pairings and so on. Plus of course, we've spent some hours playing the Lego HP games too!

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    1. Being an HP fan is so, so much more fun when there's someone else who completely understands your love for HP and loves it, too, (AND plays the Lego HP games with you)! :D

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  6. Awwwww ♥♥♥

    Ok so, I want to be a part of you guys' family so we can be competitive about our Houses, have 'Bloody Hell Harry' screeching competitions, and PLAY LEGO HP (I'll play Harry and let you guys duke it out over Sirius and Lupin, I swear!)

    Siriusly though (heehee!) I love your family memories and I wish my family would get up to stuff like that. I only have one cousin who's a fan on my mom's side and two on the other side but they're much more 'tame' about it than I am so they wouldn't go for all my fangirling. Sigh.

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    1. I hereby make you an honorary member of our family, Micheline! And feel free to fangirl as much as you'd like to! :D No worries about playing as Harry, either—I don't remember there ever being an argument over who was going to play as him. XD

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