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!