When I was ten years old, the first Harry Potter book was published. My first copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was a gift from my neighbor. She knew I liked to read and told me this was the best new book for kids.

“You’ll have to tell me all about it when you’re done,” she said as she handed me the book. I went home that night and started reading.

I finished the book very early in the morning; in fact, I stayed up way past my bedtime and read it all the way through. It was the first of many times I would read HP deep into the night. I got several copies of The Sorcerer’s Stone that Christmas. I got hooked. I went to midnight book releases, dreamed of finding the Room of Requirement, memorized the names of spells. I waited until my 16th birthday for my letter from Hogwarts. I literally grew up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

So you would have thought that when they started adapting the books to movies, I would have been thrilled. You’d have thought that I would be elated at an extension of the story I loved so much, at a chance to see what I so carefully crafted in my head thrown up on the big screen.

I have never seen and will never see a Harry Potter movie. Much as I find Daniel Radcliffe crazy hot and Rupert Grint adorable, I will not pay to see them wandering around in cloaks, fighting off Voldemort, and engaging in general wizardry.

When the first movie came out, I was actually very upset. I loved the world that J.K. Rowling had created and that I had envisioned in my head. I had my own image of Harry Potter, of Hogwarts, and of the whole wizarding world. I had the option of taking J.K. Rowling’s world and running with it, envisioning my own characters. I felt like I was a part of the world because it was partly my world. It wasn’t the images some director had conjured up and it wasn’t done on a budget or for profit. It was a world that made me happy.

Moreover, movies simply can’t capture as much as a book can. The later books got longer and longer; a movie for mainstream audiences can really only be about two hours long. Maybe two and a half, but then it’s a long movie.

There are all sorts of nuances and one-liners and details and beautiful moments that are sacrificed when a book is adapted into a movie, particularly with the Potter films. I’ve heard that they cut the entire character of Peeves from the movies. Peeves is a great, hilarious addendum to the books. It’s characters like Peeves that make the books so much better than any other fantasy series, and that give the books that edge they have over the movies.

To me, the movies are a side of Harry Potter I never need to see. So while you enjoy your midnight screening of The Deathly Hallows, I will be at home with the book, Peeves and all.