Then I found forum RP. I had never really seen anything like this before I stumbled upon it hidden in its own sub-forum on an MSN group when I was about 14 or so. In those first few hours scouring that forum, reading every post that seemed mildly interesting, I fell in love. There was such beauty in some of the more talented RPers' posts. They knew their characters and connected to them in such a way that enabled me to feel like I knew them too.
It was the world of Harry Potter as I'd never seen it before. It had jumped from the page into these new people's lives. All right, so it was still confined to the computer screen and these “people” were still fictional, but it was more alive than it was when confined to the books no matter how real they seemed to me...it was adaptive, it was new, it was exciting, and it was something I could actually experience in “real time” in whatever way I chose.
So I jumped in with a few RPers I'd never met before, and I was extremely intimidated! I knew I'd never live up to their writing in the past threads they'd been involved in. And I was right. I sucked. I was that n00b that jumped into a thread that was moving along fine with a “Hi, my name is Cygnus” and expected them to engage me in a thrilling conversation before whisking me off for some excellent and life-altering adventure. That obviously didn't happen.
Over time, though, my writing skills improved (though I still don't claim to be an excellent writer), and I found my place in the RP community. That place was leading the Pureblood Club. It was a plot that was hatched during a late-night chat after I'd started my own MSN RP group (Harry's Magical World). I'm honestly not sure who came up with it now, but we all jumped in and thoroughly enjoyed our threads together until drama broke up HMW.
Then I moved to Mugglenet Interactive and restarted Pureblood Club there with great success, using a lot of the backstory from HMW and inventing a lot along the way to fit into new plots, taking on a lot of new characters for consistency and to make actual plots happen. Then, we started the short-lived Patronus Club and the adult purist group, Hydra, before abandoning MNI when drama started there as well. We briefly tried to start our own group (Out of the Ashes RP), but we ended up abandoning it as well when RP lost its appeal because of the real life drama that eventually creeps in and a lack of interest.
RP has brought me further into the HP community because it helped me make new friends who introduced me to wizard rock, fan parodies, and other HP fan greatness. It also made me the fan I am today because of the late-night study sessions for plots. I mean, who else has spent hours researching horcruxes (besides Voldemort) or the history of Hogsmeade? It taught me about many of the subtleties of the series and the art of creativity so that I could wind new stories into the plot line while the trio was still at Hogwarts or create entirely new atmospheres for the wizarding world after Voldemort's downfall. It taught me how to create a believable character and to see things from others' viewpoints, even when I know that they are all wrong (has anyone tried having an intelligent debate between a purist and a...sane person? It's hard!). I've learned flexibility after trying to RP with people who simply insist that they have an ipod at Hogwarts, are Voldemort's son/wife, or something else that's just plain impossible. And I've learned that to truly appreciate the characters in the series, you need to actually step into their shoes for a while (though I detest RPing canon characters and think only a very small percentage of RPers do it well).
My loves of theatre and writing play a large part in RP's draw, but any HP fan would admit that if there were a way for them to feel truly immersed in the wizarding world, they'd take it in a heartbeat. RP was that for me.
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