Let’s talk Hogwarts Legacy, officially one week in from its release date. No, not about the internet discourse around the problematic background to the video game (although some fascinating conversations by very smart people are happening online!), but of the deeper forced reckoning that Harry Potter’s continued pop culture relevance may have sparked in other young adults like myself.

Like many young socially-aware young people raised in the world of Harry Potter, a fantastical realm where young people were accepted regardless of their identity, J.K. Rowling’s Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminism (TERF) online activism felt like a punch to the gut. The idea that the author of one of my most beloved and inclusive childhood series is actively working to ensure that my trans friends do not have equal rights…sucked.

It sucked so bad.

None of this is ground-breaking: like many, many other young adults, JK’s TERF activism forced me to re-examine my childhood love of the series, something that would have been more comforting if left untouched and pristine in my memory. And I was admittedly less impacted than some of my peers - while I loved the books, they didn’t form the crux of my youthful identity in the way I knew they did for many of my friends.

And of course, no matter how tempting it was to customize my own little witch character in a virtual Hogwarts world, I did not buy the game. I firmly support trans rights in the face of TERFs, and that’s not even touching on the insidious anti-semitism of the game’s development.

But I don’t want this to be a conversation about either “death of the author” or some “voting with your dollars” capitalistic ethics rhetoric, because smarter and better-positioned people than me have already written about these issues. Instead, I want to go deeper, dig into the roots of the conversation around Hogwarts Legacy, which has forced a self-examination of the themes and schemas that have guided the lives of many of my generation of Millenials, forming the central takeaways of our childhood books.

As a bookish child with undiagnosed anxiety, a lot of my learning about how the world worked and what my values should be came from childhood fiction like Harry Potter.

And some of that was great. I got the ability to escape and explore settings I would never be able to in reality. And some of that was potentially harmful. How many other unappraised beliefs from childhood fiction had I internalized and left, untouched and unquestioned, comfortingly unexamined, just like my love for Harry Potter before someone allowed J.K. Rowling to have unmonitored access to Twitter?

What is it about these fictional worlds that I continue to mourn the loss of? What did they offer to me as the reader that now, in my late 20s, I still regret losing their magic?

Specifically, I’m intrigued by how most books that I read as a child had a character who was the “chosen one” or “special." Villains were villains, heroes were unequivocally remarkable and good, and the reader knew where that division lay clearly.

Harry Potter was not alone in this framework. It was also present in the phenomenal Percy Jackson series and spinoffs (written by an author who prioritizes inclusive adaptations and continues to champion authors of colour!), Artemis Fowl, Animorphs, A Series of Unfortunate Events, His Dark Materials, The Inheritance Cycle… all the childhood series an adult currently in their late-20s might be familiar with.

And all series which share a similar theme: the main character, the frame upon which the reader hangs the hat of their emotional investment, is Special.

The heroes are truly special, often magically unique, possessing some phenomenal traits or abilities that makes them stand out and imparts them with great responsibility. Because of their uniqueness, they can save the world. They can do good. They are unquestioningly, objectively exceptional. They are the Main Character for a reason.

I internalized many of the beliefs inherent to this framework as a child: good people, the heroes, used their powers to help others. They saved the world. This key schema, while of course grown to be more complex over time, still forms the root of much of my work as a Public Servant in gender policy analysis. While not always expressed so neatly, the idea of serving a greater good and of helping others continues to energize my professional journey.

But I also internalized the darker shadow of childhood fiction’s moralistic narratives: to be the hero, you not only had to be good, you also had to be remarkable. Goodness and Extraordinariness went hand-in-hand. They rarely existed without the other. Indeed, there had to be something special about you to be worthy of becoming the Hero, of shouldering the moral responsibility of goodness, of taking up space in the narrative. You must stand out to be worthy.

The black and white binaries of fiction that shaped my bookish youth were so comforting primarily because, unlike the real world, uncomfortable gray areas and nuances didn’t have to be grappled with. We as the reader knew who the heroes were because they were explicitly Good and Chosen.

This sounds like a simple revelation, but I wish someone had said it directly to me: in reality, you do not need to be exceptional to do good. You do not need to be the Chosen One. You do not even need to be perfect. Imperfect consistency is fine. It is genuinely, sincerely alright to be the Neville Longbottom of your story, and unlike the fictional boundaries of Hogwarts, this does not make you less worthy of attention, of time, of care, and of justice.

In fact, perfection is a specter that, when chased, will waste your time and energy and burn out your light. Perfection does not exist. Authors who create some of the most magical fictional worlds ever delved into can have troubling and harmful values in reality. Humans are complex.

You are worthy of taking your vacation and sick days; of dedicated time to look after yourself; of asking your boss to use a different communication approach for feedback; of intentionally disconnecting your work phone in the evenings; of working towards a career that energizes you, simply because of who you are. You are worthy of happiness, and that does not need to be earned by being The Best.

As someone raised to be a stereotypical Type A overachiever, I wish it hadn’t taken me this long to realize it. It took most of my 20’s (and a lot of therapy!) for me to move towards accepting myself as-is and being comfortable with imperfection, as a person and as an employee.

And it turns out the path to changing all of this was not to TRY MORE, to be the 0.01% that beats these demons through sheer force of will.

It was acceptance. I’m not going to be perfect, no matter how hard I try. I am not the Chosen One. And that’s OK.

No seriously, that’s OK.

The author cannot afford every single character their own story and journey. That is the limit of fiction, both comforting and restricting. In reality there are no Chosen Ones, but there are also no Alicia Spinnets, who get an occasional cursory mention and then become background characters who are immediately forgotten about.

After all, they are only words on a page, and you are a real, complex, fully alive, flawed human being.

In reality, we’re all The Chosen One some of the time, in some specific situations. We will thrive some of the time, and not all of the time. And that’s OK. We can handle the feeling of imperfection. We can handle the challenge of moving away from this ethos of individualism, and exist in communities where asking for help and admitting struggles is accepted.

I’m starting my PhD in the fall and unlike the start of my Masters degree, I have accepted that as I head back to school, I will rarely be the smartest person in the room. In fact, I may never be the best, the wittiest, the best writer, the prettiest, the smartest question-asker, the most interesting. But despite that, I still deserve to be in that room. I still have value without being The Best. And in fact, maybe those external achievements, those little mental awards of “best,” are not worthy of achievement at all. Because they ultimately mean nothing: you will continue adventuring and living your fulsome life without them.

I am working hard on improving my internal self-talk, especially in professional environments. Gradually shifting from “You need to be the best or you don’t deserve it” to “I worked hard and I’m proud of me” and “I am allowing myself to not know everything,” and “I did my best and that is amazing.” Treating myself kindly. It’s hard and messy, and sometimes it feels a bit silly. It does not follow the linear progression of a classic hero’s quest, but it is more real for it.

It took a long time for me to unpack the feeling that I still needed to strive for being The Chosen One regardless. But ultimately, a fictional conceit that provided a comforting binary in childhood book pages was also offering me harmful schemas that wasted my energy in a way that detracted from my ability to be present in my own story. Not being The Best does not prevent any of us from doing real good in the world.

There is freedom in the gray area, in the nuance and imperfection of my non-fictional reality. And in time, I know my adventures as my own Main Character will stretch far beyond what the inky limits that flawed and fabricated worlds like Hogwarts could ever offer.