Harry Potter hoopla

The Harry Potter hoopla is slowly dying down at our house. I think this is our third HP midnight release party? Certainly our second. It’s become something of a ritual. I wear my Hogwarts tshirt, and Laura pulls on her most recent witch costume. She wanted me to dress up in my Professor McGonagall costume, which I wore at the Halloween party last year. I did wear my Gryffindor scarf, which I crocheted myself (and on which I got loads of compliments!), but since the rest of the costume consists of this difficult witch hat—it really just will not stay on right—and my outrageously expensive graduation gown, I decided not. My robes really are perfect for the costume, since after all Hogwarts is based on British boarding schools and academic robes in the first place, but that outfit cost more than my wedding gown! The thought of chasing three kids around in a packed bookstore at midnight is bad enough.

Yes, we had an extra kid. We’ve taken along my nephew Harrison for our last two HP releases; this year he dressed very creatively as a Muggle. He and Laura were very close when they were little—they’re only a year apart in age—but it’s a different dynamic now that she’s about ten years more emotionally mature. Something about that boy/girl maturation rate, whew. He spent half the HP party running around sword fighting with his magic wand while Laura rolled her eyes at him in this very preteen way. Will went along for part of the ride this year, but Chris and I drove two cars so they could go home when the baby crash hit—about 11, well past bedtime. By that time most of the fun kid stuff was over—and Will wouldn’t get his face painted anyhow. Chris finally had to take him home because he started pitching a fit because he wanted robes like all the other kids.

We spent most of Saturday reading. Laura and I got our own separate copies, since she carts hers around in her bookbag and trashes them. We did meet Harrison’s folks for dinner and to drop him off, so Chris and Will listened to music while the three of us sat in the car reading. After dinner, we figured that while we were at it, we’d hit a couple other bookstores to see their festivities too. Check out the bracelet collection!

Chris is reading my copy now—it’s hard to share, because I’m ready to start rereading already, but I guess it’s fair he gets a shot early on too. He spent the time I was reading VI rereading V and being patient while I was away. Laura’s almost done, and I expect she should be to the serious stuff about now; it’s been very quiet in the living room for the last hour. She looks so intent and so beautiful and bookish, sitting on the couch with her nose in that book and her cute new glasses, which she’s finally remembering to wear when she reads. She will come in occasionally and ask me again to tell her who is the Half Blood Prince? (I won’t tell—but I did guess right on my second try.) Or to tell her what this word means: blasé? If I didn’t love Harry Potter on my own, I would love these books for this, if nothing else—they made her realize she could read something complicated, something big and fat, something more than just those cute little Junie B. Jones chapter books.

As a girl, I couldn’t have imagined a bookstore event, much less something of this magnitude, such worldwide scope. I checked out the maximum number of library books for years. We had no bookstore at all in my hometown until I was almost a teenager, when we finally got a mall with a B. Dalton. I thought I would die when I saw those tables of remaindered books. I met my first boyfriend in a library. I actually had a summer job waiting tables at Shoney’s one year just so I could stop by the bookstore after work and buy a book with my tip money—I literally read a book a day that summer. And now, when you ask my children what they want to do, they both want to go to the bookstore. I love that so much. I love that we have Harry Potter, and that Laura will have these wonderful memories of books in her childhood too.

I read today that Rowling estimates it’ll be two years before the last HP book comes out, and I just about died. What if something happened to her and she couldn’t finish the series? Good Lord. But part of me rejoiced too—because by then, when the last book comes out, William will be old enough to remember it too. It’ll be 12:01 a.m. some July, and we’ll be there no matter how damn tired and old I am, and maybe that time I’ll wear the full regalia. I make a pretty darn good professor, let me tell you.