first draft of my second personal essay

When you're a child discovering the majical worlds that books can offer you, you can often lose yourself too much. Care too much and love too much. When I was young my father would read to me and it is to him I blame for altering me so much with one simple mistake.
I am a striving English student, with many pet peeves. I sometimes appear to suffer from OCD when someone pronounces a word wrong around me, and I know why. I'm very picky about how writing sounds, about how names sound.
When I was very young my father brought a small red book, with a geeky boy standing in front of a steam engine on the cover, home for me. He told me, "Emily, every night before you go to sleep we are going to read some of this book, I will read to you and eventually you'll read to me." And so began the world of Harry Potter.
During the day I woul dplay Harry Potter, using branches for wands and I learned to write by copying out spells from the books and memorizing them. In Kindergarten I could write my name better than everyone and in grade one I could read, sure my spelling was worthless but I was literate before anyone else. By the end of grade two I could write cursive, no big deal. I amazed my teachers in school, they thought I was a genius but really I was just in love.
I loved Harry Potter, not the boy but the world. As soon as my dad came home I was begging for him to read to me, begging to live in the world I so much preffered. I loved the hours spent on the couch reading with my dad, it was the only thing we did together and the only thing we had in common. It was always me and Dad, Mom just didn't understand our addiction. Those hours were everything to me, but they didn't stop me from reading ahead without my dad as soon as I could.
I loved Harry for his strengh, Ron for his humour and his ginger hair, but most of all I loved Hermione for being one of the guys and holding her own. Sometimes I would pretend my friends Daniel and Clay were Harry and Ron, and I of course the mighty Hermione. She was my idol, my friend, the older sister I never had, the image I had for myself.
Now my dad isn't a reader, except when it comes to Harry Potter and when we read aloud to me he made a horrid mistake that neither of us would realize until much later. He called her Her-me-own. Her-me-own, my hero. That's how he said it so that's how I said it. She was Her-me-own to me and in the world I wanted so much I thought my heart would break. I have never since wanted something or someone so much as I wanted my own letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I wanted to go off to school and when I arrived and was sorted, into Gryffindor of course, I would walk over to the table and Her-me-own would offer me the seat next to her.
I was half-way through the fourth Harry Potter book (as it was a new release and I'd read all the others atleast threetimes) when the first movie came out. My father, mother and I went to the Caprice and I could hardly keep still I was so excited. I munched on my kids popcorn meal and it was almost gone before the movie even started. My family couldn't afford to go to the movies so this was an extra-special treat. The movie started and I thought my head would explode.
Twenty minutes in, it did.
"My name's Hermione, Hermione Granger"
Her-my-oh-nee. Not Her-me-own, Her-my-oh-nee. My heart was crushed and my world torn apart. I cried all the way home.
I cried for hours, I cried for days. She wasn't the person I loved, she was someone else. She was a frizzy girl with a frizzy name. She wasn't right, my idol turned out to be my tormentor. The world which I had spent years fabricating to include me no longer fit. It was no longer real and it was no longer possible. Without the possibility of Hogwarts there wasn't a possibility for me. I wanted to die, my world, my life was gone. It was the end of my first great love affair.
I boycotted Harry Potter for a while, tried reading other books but like a dog still in love with its abusive owner, I went crawling back. Eventually I got over Her-me-own, and got to know Her-my-oh-nee. I slowly sank back into the world but with less passion, without the fervour. Her-my-oh-nee was nice, but I missed the lust of Her-me-own.
Harry Potter was never the same for me, and when I turned eleven and no letter came only a few tears fell. J K Rowling's world has already used up its allotment of tears.
I'll never forget Her-me-own, and she is the reason thatyou must pronounce things right. She is the reason things must but perfect, because if you're going to build yourself a new world you don't want it destroyed on a mere formality.