so you're all going to laugh at me, but. . .

(This is only one of xiy's numerous strange and not-exactly-a-fear-but-holy-crap-it-made-sleeping-difficult childhood terrors.)

And also: PLEASE DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE READ HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS. I IMAGINE THAT MOST OF YOU READING THIS EITHER HAVE ALREADY READ THE BOOK OR OTHERWISE DO NOT CARE, BUT I GUESS A SPOILER WARNING IS NECESSARY?

When I was a smallish child, I was scared of a lot of things, and all these things could best be termed as "unknown things lurking in the dark." When I was a smallish child, I also enjoyed reading voraciously, since I had no other social life outside of perhaps school.

Thus, I read the first HP book in second grade (which seems relatively late compared to most of you) and it wasn't so terribly awful, though the whole Forbidden Forest thing creeped me out to no end afterward. And then I got it into my head to read the Chamber of Secrets, which turned out to be a very bad idea.

GAHHH.

Because, you see, in that book, there is a) mysterious almost-murder, b) snakes, c) loads of mysterious "KILL THEM ALL RAWR" messages, d) blood, e) tramps through the Forbidden Forest (and it wasn't so much Aragog that scared me as just the freakin' creepiness of a dark forest in the middle of the night), f) a BASILISK, g) scary possessing Horcrux-diaries; and apparently that was a bit too much for my eight-year-old brain to handle.

I started out innocently enough:

"Is a book? Ooh, book! I will read the book!"

 And, really, I didn't mind the mysterious creepiness of the book so much until our dear protagonist(s) were treated to Riddle's creepy Horcrux-diary and then Hermione was all, "OMG BASILISK." Because then there was the whole "her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever" that scared me so badly (and it still is vaguely unsettling now, even when I know the ending), and let me tell you that the whole Moaning Myrtle revelation (I don't know why; it was just creepy) and also Harry entering the Chamber was possibly the scariest thing I had read in my short and tender life up until that point.

Yeah, that was kind of my reaction.

 And then, if that weren't bad enough, the basilisk coming out of Slytherin's mouth and Tom Riddle being all, "YARR* I BE VOLDEMORT MWAHAHAHA" scared me in that sort of morbid way that made me want to keep reading on. So this was kind of how the whole process went:

>.< (The basilisk was fun to draw, though.)

And then I basically spent the next few nights in mortal terror of giant, slithery, blood-crazed Slytherinian (is that the adjective form of 'Slytherin'?) monsters coming out through my walls to kill me.

Yeah. asjhasdfjkgdfashdf

 Because it's not like I'm afraid of snakes, even. I think what scared me is just the fact that there could be one lurking somewhere in the darkness, wanting to kill itself some little girl. :|

(Oh, and for some reason I ended up watching the movie not too soon after, I think. The horror of it is too great to be retold [and anyway, it was pretty much like the book experience but TEN TIMES WORSE.])

Now you can all point and laugh at the silly girl who was turned off of Harry Potter for years afterward because of the second book. (I would like to say here that the second book is still by far the creepiest for me, and I really don't know why.) Point and laugh.

xiy 

*For some reason, I gave him a pirate voice. I do not know why.