EXCLUSIVE Still magic.. 25 years on
Fans reveal how Harry Potter cast his spell
IT was 1997 when the world first met “The Boy Who Lived” and fell under bespectacled Harry Potter’s enchanting spell and JK Rowling’s magical imagination.
As mere Muggles, we were introduced to the youngster with the lightning bolt scar who would take us on a flying ride across six more books and eight hit films.
As Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone turns 25 tomorrow we asked superfans how our hero changed their life.
■ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – 25th Anniversary Edition, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, £16.99.
Reading was always a struggle for Jacqueline Hulbert, but it took until she was 21 for her to be diagnosed with dyslexia.
“School was very hard,” she says. “I knew I had to work harder, even just to get the same level as some of the other people.”
However, when she was 11 her mum came up with an idea to help her to read – Harry Potter.
“I had such a bad relationship with reading, the Harry Potter series was the first book series I finished,” says Jacqueline, who lives in Hoddesdon, Herts.
“I started reading them at quite a pivotal point where I was struggling with school.”
She and older sister Catherine, then 18, read them together and she adds: “Having that person to talk to about them kind of made me persevere through it.”
Since then Jacqueline, 23, has read all seven books three times.
Her favourite character has always been brainy overachiever Hermione Granger.
“I always wanted to be the smart girl,” she explains. “I always wanted to be at the top of the class and I always wanted to be that kind of personality.”
The book series has shaped her life in many other ways too.
She has bagged a dream job at the Warner Bros: Harry Potter Studio Tour, telling people about the exhibition.
Her home is filled with memorabilia, including several models of horcruxes, objects in which villain Voldermort hid his soul.
She also collects editions of the books, as well as Hogwarts school jumpers.
And Jacqueline adds it helped her accept her differences.
“I felt not alone,” she says. “Because these characters who I was essentially growing up with had something that made them different too.”
I felt not alone, characters I was growing up with were different too