I don't know if any of you are subscribed the LeakyCon YouTube channel or not, but they've been doing interactive-type videos where they choose a topic and their subscribers send in responses, and this time, it's about the fan community itself. You can watch the video here with Mr. Andrew Sims, but in the mean time, this is my story of how I got involved with the fandom.
I first got into the Harry Potter books on summer vacation around the third grade, I think. My best friend at the time and I were camping with my parents, and she brought the first two books with her. She read me a passage from Chamber of Secrets, and I was instantly hooked. I don't remember when I bought the first book, but I do remember buying the fourth in fifth or sixth grade at a book fair. I think that was probably when the obsession really started, because it's the first memory of me buying something Potter related. After that, I remember lots of Harry Potter stuff - I remember begging my parents to let me get a Potter bookmark drawn by Mary Grandpre, and standing in line to one of the movies, wishing more than anything that Potter was real. I remember going into town with my brother to buy Order of the Pheonix and sitting in the house all day to read it. I remember checking MuggleNet multiple times a day to see any news about when Half-Blood Prince would get released. I remember the first time I heard of Harry and the Potters. I remember listening to Mugglecast episodes, and then adding Pottercast to my podcasts. That's when I started to go to Leaky more than Mugglenet. Pottercast is also where I heard about Nerdfighteria for the first time. I remember being introduced to the Ministry of Magic by my friend Carly in December 2007 and becoming instantly obsessed with wrock. I remember signing up to be part of the Harry Potter Alliance, which was ultimately how I mostly became part of the community.
Before that, I had wanted to be part of the community so badly, but I didn't know how. I joined MyLeaky, and met some of my first Potter friends there. I got to know them over Twitter, which I signed up for because of Tom Felton and Matt Lewis, and from them I met Kenz and Slyvie and Joella, which led me to our brief collaboration channel on YouTube, Back4theFight. It was brief, but through it I met and became friends with Kenz, Sylvie, Joella, Mickey, Maddie and Sarah. This was December 2009, and it was the first time I could say I actually had friends in the fandom.
From there, I got more active with the HPA, and as I said, started to make friends on the HPA Ning. My activity on the Ning was sporadic, though, so I didn't really meet any other people until I became a staffer at the HPA, which instantly introduced me to so many more amazing people. I had wanted to be a staffer since the summer of 2009, and applied then, though I didn't actually get "hired" until February 2010. I felt may way around the HPA, and started to get to know the other staffers. I especially met a lot of people during 2010's Accio Books, when I was one of the Prefects for Hufflepuff House, and it's all grown from there.
The people at Leaky want us to have short snippets about how we got involved with the community, but I don't think I could, my journey into the fandom was so long. So, this isn't an actual submission, but this is my fandom story. I can't wait for LeakyCon when I get to meet so many of my friends, and hopefully meet new ones. :D 129 Days.
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