During the Melbourne Writers Festival I spend a day dressed in costume talking about Harry Potter. We drink beers and lie in the sun and I think about how many friends I have made by talking about Harry Potter. When I have been lonely, people who love these books have found me. I like Harry Potter but I like its fans even more.

I go home at the end of that day, sleepy and nostalgic, and decide to reawaken my long dormant fan fiction habit. Harry Potter fan fiction was my first foray into fandom and diving back in feels like regressing. It feels like standing face-to-face with a fifteen-year-old me. For two weeks, I neglect the stack of blocks on the floor beside my bed, pouring my energy into a single very long piece of fan fiction called The Life and Times. It is more than six hundred thousand words long—shorter than the entire Harry Potter series by not by much. I lose myself in it.