Introducing The Silver Stag!

Come see my Cafepress store, The Silver Stag, full of fun Harry Potter designs!

If Disney did Harry Potter

I don't know how I came across this website, but I spent a delightful hour looking through this person's Disney-animation-style drawings of characters and scenes from the Harry Potter books. They're fantastic! Be sure to check out the extensive Prisoner of Azkaban section, which is almost like a storyboard of the whole book.


When you have a little time, take a look through the website. You can look by book or by each individual character. I especially like the large amount of Lupin drawings. He looks much more like I picture him here than he does in the Warner Bros. movies. Enjoy!

Lupin and Neville discussing the boggart:



Dumbledore with a young Tom Riddle:




The artist protesting a shocking lack of Lupin in later books (notice how they all appear to be female...):

Seen Online...

Knock-knock.

Who's there?

You know.

You-know-who?

AVADA KEDAVRA!

Harry's Here!

Finally, the time had come! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be in our hands within mere hours. All the waiting was over, and we were about to find out EVERYTHING we had waited so long to discover.


But first, the party! Suzie and I prepared with great enthusiasm. We both have Hogwarts uniforms from Whimsic Alley in L.A. (I highly recommend a trip, if you've never been there), Suzie's from Ravenclaw house, and mine from Gryffindor. Here we are in our uniforms, with wands I found at Borders the night before. Since you can't tell, I must note here that the wands make a magical noise at the push of a button, and the tip of Suzie's lights up in blue and mine in red!

We couldn't resist a friendly duel before we left:



We both also wore our time turners, in case you can't tell what we have around our necks. I brought along a half-finished crocheted elf-hat, and my S.P.E.W. collection tin, complete with sad little solitary galleon someone donated:

We had fun at the party, although they didn't seem to have as much going on as they did at the previous two Borders Harry Potter parties I went to. They had a costume contest, which seemed to be a bit of a joke. The winners had pretty lame costumes, and several people with AMAZING costumes were completely overlooked, such as this woman, dressed as Sibyll Trelawney (with her adorable Gryffindor daughters):

There was also a woman who WAS Molly Weasley, and, my absolute favorite, this fantastic Delores Umbridge costume:


The winner of the contest was pretty amazing, though. He didn't even really come in a costume, unless you count the glasses and the scar drawn on his forehead. He just looked exactly like Daniel Radcliffe:


Around 11:00, Borders announced that they would have employees roving the store with clip boards giving out special prizes. I knew this was my chance. I walked straight up to the first person I saw with a clip board and said, "Ask me some some questions." He had no idea who he was dealing with, obviously, because the first question he asked me was, "What is the spell used to light up the wand tip?" Please. He tried to find a hard one after that, but when I knew the name of the ice cream parlour in Diagon Alley without missing a beat, I think he started to realize he would have to dig a little deeper. He spent several minutes looking for another question. He kept saying, "No, you'll get that...no, that's too easy..." Finally, he found one he thought would stump me. He said, "If you can get this one, you'll get a really special prize." The question was, "What is the 'tickling spell'?" Too easy. (Do you know the answer?) I even knew exactly which scene in which book it was used, and who used it, but I didn't tell him that.

My prize was spot #5 in line!! It was the highest spot given to a trivia question winner, as #1 was a raffle prize, and #2-4 went to the costume contest winners. Very cool. I was able to give my #71 to Suzie, who gave her #121 to Steve Bradley and his family, who we had run into there, and who were hundreds and hundreds of spots down the line. Suzie and I went around listening to more trivia questions, and there wasn't a single one I didn't know! Cool? Or sad? You be the judge. I think I just have a good memory. Yeah, that's it... :-)

Suzie and I got some compliments on our costumes--mostly on the time turners. Everyone wanted to know where we got them. A lot of people also did double takes on the Flourish & Blotts bags, and asked where they were from. One girl ahead of me in line, who was one of the costume contest winners, saw my Flourish & Blotts bag and thought it was cool. I gave her one of my extra bookmarks, and she actually came over and hugged me, she was so excited! It was really cute.

Finally, just before midnight, the Borders employees brought the books into the store.


The excitement in the air was palpable. The whole store did a New Years-esque countdown to midnight, and then the buying frenzy began. I would have been out of there in about 10 seconds, except the idiots running things had forgotten to bring in any of the audio version of the book, so I had to wait several minutes for them to go find them and bring them in. So much for my #5. Finally, I bought my book and CD, and headed home for a long night (and next day) of reading. All in all, a very enjoyable, exciting, and above all, fun experience!

Book-Release Morning

I got up early on the morning of July 20th so I could get in line at Borders to get a numbered wristband which would secure my place in line to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows later that night. I wanted to be sure to get as low a number as possible so I could get out of the store quickly that night--not only so I could get home and start reading, but also so as few people as possible would have a chance to look at the back of the book and spoil anything. The store opened at 9:00, and when I got there at 8:00, there were already well over 50 people ahead of me.

Some of them had lawn chairs, and had apparently been waiting since the night before. That was more dedication than even I was willing to muster. Several news channels were there filming us and interviewing people. There were a few people in costume, including these girls in front of me, who came as The Unforgivable Curses ("Crucio" is behind the girl on the right):

Suzie came about half an hour later, dressed in her full Ravenclaw uniform (you'll see pictures later). The line was practically back to the movie theater by then, so I traded places with her in case the news people might want to interview her. They did, of course. She was on the news for several minues, during which time they asked her several trivia questions that displayed her knowledge of the Harry Potter books--and their complete lack of it. The very first question they asked her was "What position does Harry play in 'Kidditch'?" Suzie corrected them and answered all their questions correctly, nicely displaying her Ravenclaw brains.

Finally, at 9:00, they started letting us in the store. My wristband was #71--not too bad. But as it turned out, I wouldn't need it after all...

Saying Goodbye to Harry

As I'm finally getting around to sorting through all the pictures I took at the Harry Potter book release party at Borders, I thought I would share the whole experience here, even though it's rather late.

I thought the last Harry Potter book merited a bit of hoopla, so I made a considerable amount of effort preparing for the Big Event. Suzie, Bill, Chris, and I all attended and had a great time.

I'll start, today, with pre-party preparations. I went to the last two book release parties alone, and spent a fair amount of time sitting around and waiting. Not wanting that to happen again, my first idea was for something fun to bring to do while we were waiting. I looked online for a Harry Potter puzzle book, but couldn't find a good one. So, I decided I'd have to make a trip to Diagon Alley. Flourish and Blotts had this great book--Battling Boredom, by Q. Long-Si. It was full of crossword puzzles, anagrams, logic puzzles, word searches, riddles, poems, and even paper and instructions for making an origami Golden Snitch. A great find, I must say.

Flourish and Blotts was kind enough to throw in some great bookmarks, which came in handy later.

Of course, with all those puzzles, we would need something to write with. And what better to write with than a quill? Scrivenshaft's is the only place for quills, so I had to make a trip to Hogsmeade as well.

And, yes, the black one writes in red ink...

While I was in Hogsmeade, I couldn't resist a trip to Honeydukes, the best candy store in the world! I picked up a wide variety of treats, including Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Smoked Dragon Liver, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Exploding Bon-Bons, Licorice Wands, Acid Pops, Jelly Slugs, Sugar Quills, and, of course, Honeyduke's Best Chocolate.

I even got to see them making some fresh Cockroach Clusters. Mmmmm!

All in all, a very productive trip. I'll write more tomorrow about the wait for the book, and the actual Book Release Party itself.