Discovering Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as a 12-year-old was like discovering a world that I knew I belonged to. It was immediate and exhilarating. I was an obsessive reader as a child, and not easily impressed by anything remotely fantastical, but the completeness of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world drew me in. Her invention was plausible, and her imagination so soundly anchored to my own perception of the world that I revelled in Harry Potter’s familiarity. After all, the series was so wonderfully British. Instead of elves, foreign lands and knights were railway stations, cups of tea and boarding schools I had for so long read of in Enid Blyton and C.S. Lewis.

It is a world I can return to with ease; it has not only accommodated my own eccentricities, longings and habits as a devoutly studious and imaginative individual, but validated them. For 14 years, the seven Harry Potter novels have been my ‘comfort literature’, their filmic translation ideal when procrastinating. I’ve been in love with Hogwarts and all who sail in her.