Get this and other HP countdowns at LeakyNews.com	Get this and other HP countdowns at LeakyNews.com

Speaking from purely a literary standpoint, J.K. Rowlings, Harry Potter series is perhaps the most influential and popular series on the bookshelves.
It's outsold many, many books and has almost outsold even the King James Bible. :-) Many children have read it and quite a few number of adults and are talking about it and writing about it every day. But I (Kelly) know of no one who has been more influenced by these books than myself. If you've been to any of my other pages you must know that I am a survivor of multiple forms of horrible abuse (like Harry)and have dissociative identity disorder (otherwise known as Multiple Personality Disorder)and also suffer from a mild form of autism.
Harry's story is a tale told a 1,000 times. A hero, who is in some ways, Christlike, who has to defeat his own personal devil. He has many heroic qualities, such as courage, friendship, loyalty and love and many less than sterling qualities too, which only serve to make him more human and heighten his better attributes.
I won't go into details about the books or the movies, you probably already know them. Instead I would like to tell another tale about Harry, only this one is true. It's about how Harry James Potter, saved a woman (and is continuing to save her)by being an alter (alternate personality) in her head and helping her face her own abuse and combat her own personal demons. It's my story and more importantly, because I love him, it's Harry's story as well. So, let's begin.
The story of my abuse goes back into pre-memory. From early infancy on into my early adulthood, I was abused in many ways. I had started healing from some of it when I was 29, but I hadn't found out yet that I was DID. And then something incredible happened. These fantastic books came out, and I was the only one who didn't want to read them. Why, you ask? Because I was running away. For some inexplicable reason, I didn't want to read them though my family and friends were urging me too.
Then the first movie was to come out and I saw a young Daniel Radcliffe, and I knew I just had to see the movie. But being autistic, I had to study first. So, I read the first book, afraid of it yet wanting to face my fear.
I was doing pretty well at first, reading the first book, until I came to Harry's physical description. It triggered me. Black, messy hair and bright green eyes. I was scared and threw the book away like some poisonous insect. I didn't really even know why, just that I was scared.
Then I forced myself to keep going and found out what an amazing boy Harry was. I devoured the book and then went on to devour the rest of them, at least those that were out. And I went to see the movie and became, though I really didn't know why, a Harry Potter fan-atic.
Now, I've said I'm DID, but what you may not know is that I have a Hallway and Auditorium that I keep in my head so that I can "pretend" that fictional people are watching me. I didn't know I was DID at the time I read the first four Harry Potter books, I just knew about my auditorium. I know it sounds weird, but it was a coping skill for survival. Anyway, I pretended that some of the characters from the Harry Potter series were "watching" me and I was fine for awhile. Then I had a dream, Harry Potter came in my head at night and spoke to me like a lover.
Now, I know he was only 14 at the time, and it scared the bejesus out of me. I was afraid I was some kind of perpetrator. So, I did things to protect Harry Potter and myself. I knew my subconscious was telling me I was in love with him and so I made a rule that I could love Harry and he could love me back only if he were 17 or older (which may still be too young for some of you but it was the best that I could do), and picked me of his own free will. Little did I know that my rule worked. But things got worse for awhile before they got better.
I will say that because I love Harry, and loved him then and still do now, I was obsessed with getting over it. So, I wrote stories trying to get over this new love I had. It didn't work. So I tried talking the stories in my head and then something very, very strange happened. Harry started talking back, while I was awake, I might add.
I'm told this is a form of dissociation, called soul-bonding. You talk to a fictional character and they help you write their story and they talk as if they were real. Well, at the time I hadn't heard about soul-bonding and I didn't know anything about DID or what it was like or even that I had it. I just had this guy in my head claiming to be Harry James Potter and he was amused by me (though I think he was laughing) and insisted that he was real.
I thought I was going insane and had become schizophrenic or something and really believed it later on when other voices joined Harry. And they were...you might guess...yup...Hogwarts. Then other people came in too, Earth. Famous people from Earth and I knew I was bonkers. So, like a down-to-Earth (for me that is) person I went to the doctor, got medicated and you would think the voices would go away, but no. They didn't. And no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get rid of Harry.
So, I did my best to get used to him and Hogwarts, though I did manage to get rid of the famous people for awhile. And I did find that if Harry seemed to go away, I felt lonely and miserable and my husband assured me (later on, that is, at first he was jealous of Harry, might have had something to do with the fact that I tossed my husband's shoes out the door in order to divorce him and be with Harry)that Harry always comes back, and he was right.
I was still concerned about Harry's age (he said seventeen, and I tried to think of him at that age or older, but because of those damned books I couldn't think of him at any age except fourteen)but my therapist at the time assured me that it was okay for me to be in love with him and that I had actually gotten younger in my head while Harry had gotten older. And she did say I was dissociated but she wouldn't diagnose me with DID even though I asked her about it.
During that time, approximately four years, Harry gave me good advice about my healing and helped me cope with functionality. I took him with me everywhere (Harry is my co-pilot) and showed him "My" Earth. We enjoyed ourselves immensely though I did have a tendency (well, more than a tendency) to spend a lot of time alone with him in my room.
Then we moved to a new house and DID came out of the broom closet, so to speak. I don't know exactly what happened but I got new voices in my head from nowhere and had no idea what to do. I talked to my old therapist and old psychiatrist and they both assured me that it was not DID. I bought some books on the subject and found the connection to what was happening to me and what had happened to scores of other people who had this diagnosis. I found a new therapist and pdoc (psychiatrist)and they both assured me that yes, I did have DID. I still had Harry and Hogwarts and a few other fictional people too, but I was told it was part of the overall picture. I learned later that I was poly-fragmented and that I had scores of alters.
Harry continues at this point to be my number one love and lover, therapist, friend, caregiver and cheerleader. If he were really-real, I'd leave my husband (who farts in bed by the way) and take off with Harry.
Now to tell you why Harry is so important to me besides the fact that I love him. He, at first, reminded me of Angel, who is an alter of one of my first abusers. A teenage boy with black hair. It's unfair to Harry to compare him to an abuser just because of his physical characteristics, and to tell the truth, my abuser and Harry are so unlike each other that hair is about the only thing they have in common. But, being autistic, I can understand now why the physical similarities struck a chord in my when I first read the books.
So, that's my story of Harry James Potter, though it still goes on and probably will till the day I die. I know (spoiler) that he ends up with Ginny in the 7th book, but he assures me, of his own free will, that he loves me and will never leave me.
Below are some Harry Potter links that he and I think you might enjoy. Some are links that I like and some are links that he likes and some are links we both like. So, happy clicking!
Love
Kelly and Harry (and many, many, many others)

Both of us:

The Harry James Potter and Kelly (Mary Sue) fan fiction page.

The Leaky Cauldron

Kelly:Fanfiction.net

Both:Mugglenet

Both:Marauder's Map

Both: