1. Getting there as early as possible for midnight book releases and movie showings because you knew half your city would be showing up.
2. And getting your costume in order because you know you had to be ON. POINT. And might even land in a newspaper if you pulled off the Dumbledore beard or those Weasley freckles.
3. Not to mention becoming very well-acquainted with the concept of lines and how to survive them in style with your squad.
4. Staying up as late as humanly possible after getting your hands on a new Harry Potter book so you could finish reading before the world spoiled you.
5. Going to Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron EVERY DAMN DAY to make sure you didn't miss any news about the next book or movie.
6. The amount of merchandise you owned as you tried to cobble together a wizarding life for yourself out of hunks of plastic from Target was at times astonishing.
7. Having intense debates over things like Snape's loyalty and whether or not Harry was a horcrux.
8. And crying together over the latest major book death.
9. You probably saw a serious* ship war or five in your day and very much knew which side you'd ride or die for.
10. Don't forget those entire literal books that were published predicting what would happen next.
11. Wrocking out at Wizard Rock concerts because the power of your fandom literally created its own musical genre.
The wrocking hasn't stopped to this day.
12. Browsing through Geocities pages with truly horrific fancasts (and making your own).
13. Having a literal countdown until your life would change all over again.
14. Not being able to picture your life after the last Harry Potter book came out because who even knew what havoc that was going to wreak on your world.
15. And when you saw THESE BOXES your heart didn't even know what to do with itself.
16. And you felt at a loss when you thought you'd seen your last Harry Potter midnight showing with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.
17. And we've gone through lulls, sure, but eventually you realized that Harry Potter will never fully die.
18. No other generation will ever quite know what it was like to grow up with this series shaping its world.
19. But we also for damn sure aren't letting the next generation get away with not loving it with everything they've got.
