My grandma handed me a book with a red steam train on the cover. It was 1998. I was 7 years old.

"The shopkeeper recommended this one for you," she said. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone."

"Thanks, Nan!" I gave her a hug and waited for the appropriate time to remove myself from the table so I could leap through the portal of those pages. I wanted to tumble down rabbit holes and stumble through mazes and step into wardrobes with lions and witches.

When I was 7 years old, I dreamed of discovering a world full of magic.

Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.