Occasionally Snarky and Meta

I'm Anna/theparisian and I'm from the US. I'm nineteen now and was eleven when I started reading the books. Growing up with the books and growing up in fandom was amazing. Like one other person commented here, I was the same age as Harry througout most of the series. When Harry was eleven and twelve, I was eleven and twelve. When Harry was thirteen, I was thirteen. When book five came out, and Harry was fifteen, I was fifteen. It was amazing to go through this, and it really does feel like we grew up together, although until a few years ago I found I could relate to Hermione the most out of all of these characters. In the wake of the girl power movement of the late nineties, Hermione was a role model I just attatched myself to. Here was a girl who wasn't pretty, wasn't blonde, was socially awkward, had buck teeth, and was a hardcore nerd, yet she could go face to face with werewolves and deatheaters and convicted felons without batting an eye. Hermione in the early books was one of the only strong females out there who didn't care what she looked like, and only cared that she was doing well in school. That to me was astounding, especially in a world of Britneys and Christinas. And in the later books, when Hermione became someone who I didn't like, I think it paralelled quite nicely because a lot of teenage girls are unlikable and do horrible things and manipulate people at around that age (like she did with crying and her academy award winning performance to lead Umbridge out to the forbidden forest). Growing up with Harry, and with all of the other characters, felt like a natural extension of myself, in a way. Because at the time I felt like the hardships they faced were just a giant metaphor for making it through adolesence.