How Harry Potter conventions took over my life

In a few days, I leave for Los Angeles — a city where I’ve barely spent a cumulative 10 days in my life. I know its geography about as well as that of Mars.

And yet in a very real sense, I’m going home.

Specifically, I'm going to LeakyCon -- a Harry Potter convention established in 2009 that I now work for, unpaid, as social media coordinator.

This is my 10th year of attending Potter conferences, which have become a way of life.

"What's a Harry Potter convention?" you might ask. "Do you just watch the movies all day?" The answer is no -- well, with the possible exception of Azkatraz, a con in 2009 during which the movies played on the hotel TV channel in the background.

For the most part, Potter cons work the way all conferences do. There are panels and presentations, regular guests, and a marketplace of vendors selling magical merch. It's a world where strangers greet each other with hugs and song lyrics, where days stretch into nights and mornings but still fly by with indecent speed. After any length of time apart, we pick up where we left off, with the closeness and rapport of college roommates.

From 2006, I was a Potter con regular. Every summer I would travel to a different city to meet up with some of my best friends and escape to a world that we created. Not Hogwarts, or any other location from the mind of J.K. Rowling, because this is beyond anything she imagined.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

My core group of fandom friends stopped going to conventions after 2011. With none of us planning to attend LeakyCon 2012, I prepared for FOMO as the convention drew nearer. Then I got a message from Melissa Anelli, director of LeakyCon and webmistress at The Leaky Cauldron.

Mel and I had been acquainted since I took a picture with her at Lumos 2006 (as a podcast host, she was like a YouTube celeb to me), crossing paths every summer. She had an opening for a volunteer coordinator and reached out because she knew and trusted me.

I registered little more than the opportunity to not miss a summer con, so I said yes.

Now a small group of volunteers -- some of the most positive and hardworking people I have met in my entire life -- has grown into a robust staff and a company, Mischief Management.

I was surrounded by giddy teenagers just like I had been, fans who thrilled to meet their heroes and geek out over the things they loved. I watched those serendipitous meetings in the lobby, the singalongs and concerts that helped us all know what it means to feel truly ourselves. Sharing the fandom with a new generation and guiding them through it has been the most unexpected and rewarding privilege.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Like any job, being on a convention staff has its frustrations, learning curves and growing pains. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by its demands on my time. I worry whether smaller events like LeakyCon or the multi-fandom GeekyCon are going to be overshadowed by the success of BroadwayCon, or next year's Con of Thrones.

This year's LeakyCon is going to be unlike anything we've seen or done before. My team has been hard at work scripting and staging a Harry Potter story that will play out on the main stage over the course of the convention. We've got actors, sets and costumes -- all in addition to the regular programming, concerts, private park event and charity ball.

For more than a decade, the Harry Potter fandom has shown me the awe-inspiring power of watching people come together, purely out of love, to celebrate something bigger than all of them. My staff position isn’t paid; dozens of us contribute our time to create this experience because of how much it means to us.

That's where I'm at now -- even if I'm more than a little ambivalent about new Potter content these days. For me, Harry Potter has long since ceased to be just a story. It's about the people I've met and the experiences we share and I'm am so lucky to still be part of that.