It's a struggle to have sympathy for someone who's existed this long having never read or watched Harry Potter, sure, but Chris Chappell's story is certainly worth your time.
See, Chappell decided it was about time he looked into this whole boy wizard deal he'd heard about, and launched straight into reading Rowling's series of novels. Except, it wasn't quite Rowling's words he was reading, as his friend Shelley Zhang soon discovered.
The version of the Order of the Phoenix he seemed to have acquired didn't quite align with what Zhang knew of the books: namely, that Dudley (Harry's cousin) doesn't jump off his school building while under the Imperious Curse, there are no graphic sex scenes between Harry and Hermione, and Draco and Ginny do not "fake a rape scene".
Chappell admitted he'd heard the books get darker and more mature as they went on, not fully realising that this didn't mean they descended to full-on smut.
"Over the last few weeks, we'd occasionally discuss Harry Potter and nothing he said seemed off," Zhang told Mashable. "But I also didn't want to spoil things for him since he somehow had remained unspoiled all these years, so we wouldn't really talk about plot points."
Friend is reading Harry Potter for the first time. He suddenly realizes he's read a fanfiction Order of the Phoenix instead of the real one. pic.twitter.com/tKNgT6usi6
— Shelley Zhang (@shelzhang) July 10, 2017
I had to burst his bubble about Ginny and Draco, unfortunately. pic.twitter.com/DKKdC5jdA4
— Shelley Zhang (@shelzhang) July 10, 2017
I had to burst his bubble about Ginny and Draco, unfortunately. pic.twitter.com/DKKdC5jdA4
— Shelley Zhang (@shelzhang) July 10, 2017
"When he started asking me about all of the 'intimate moments' and about Hermione sending Harry a picture of herself in a bikini, I lost it," she added. "I was laughing so hard I started shaking."
Thankfully, the first four books Chappell read were legitimate, meaning he'll only have to retread one installment - that's if he can erase all those slightly traumatic images now implanted in his brain.
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