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For a
seventh time, Harry Potter held the world in his spell.
At 8:04
a.m. yesterday in New York, where the boy wizard’s broom
first landed at a US publishing house, “Harry Potter
Place” stirred to life at the headquarters of Scholastic
Corp. with the arrival of the seventh and final copy of
J.K. Rowling’s spectacularly popular series. Fans were
treated to a giant Whomping Willow, a Muggle board and a
Knight Bus, modeled after the “violently purple”
triple-decker in the books.
Music
swelled as the Knight Bus churned down a narrow alley at
the end of a national tour, discharging six children in
black Hogwarts gowns who held books one through six.
Then came Arthur A. Levine, the US editor who snagged
the rights to publish Potter here for a mere $100,000.
In his hand was the first signed US edition of Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows inside a transparent
lockbox.
Then all
seven volumes were deposited into another lockbox
designed to look like a Pensieve, or stone basin for
storing thoughts and memories. With the wave of a wand
and a cloud of fairy dust, a digital clock began
ticking. For the next 15 hours, 44 minutes, and 18, 17,
16, 15 seconds, and on until midnight, Potter fans would
not move forward with their lives.
From
London to Leesburg, legions of fans, many dressed like
Potter characters, lined up outside stores and attended
parties while awaiting the book. Downtown
Silver Spring
and Old Town Alexandria turned into late-night witching
alleys as fans counted the minutes to midnight.
“There
are other good books out there, but this one seems to be
the most captivating of all,” said Peter Adler Ash, 12,
at a Borders bookstore in Silver Spring. Wearing a
pointy sorcerer’s hat plastered with silver stars and
moons and carrying a wand, Peter said he began reading
the series when he was six. He said he was a little
worried that Harry and some of his other favorite
characters might perish in the climactic battle with the
evil wizard Lord Voldemort.
“I hope
that he will live, but nobody knows. I mean, how can J.K.
Rowling make him die?”
Pottermania, which has been building for the better part
of a decade, peaked last night. The phenomenon is
familiar to anyone who has not “disapparated”
(disappeared) from the planet since Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone appeared in the United States
in 1997. Orphaned after his parents are killed by
Voldemort, Harry lives a Cinderella-like existence of
abuse and neglect with relatives until age 11, when he
is summoned by a message-bearing owl to the Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There, Harry
encounters a marvelous host of classmates and
instructors, villains and heroes, with Dickensian names
and supernatural powers. While learning the basics of
potions, dorm life and frat house-like rivalries, he
also discovers that he must face Voldemort in a decisive
battle in which one must kill the other.
Drawing
on influences from myth and legend, as well as such
contemporary sources as Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis and even
Star Wars, the books teem with magical delights and
terrors, such as Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans,
Whomping Willows, Avada Kedavra spells, Quidditch and
Horcruxes. The books also became progressively darker,
offering readers an adolescent identity quest within an
epic struggle between good and evil.
To some,
navigating Rowling’s sometimes-pedestrian prose is like
undergoing a Cruciatus Curse: a form of torture. But to
many, many more, the books have become a beloved rite of
passage.
“I think
there’s a very resonant story at the core of it: good
versus evil,” said Andrew Pendergrass, manager of the
Patrick Henry branch library in Vienna.
The
series has been credited with inspiring a generation of
young readers, especially among boys. More than 325
million copies of the first six volumes have been sold.
Five Potter movies have been made, including Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which opened
this month. They have grossed more than $4 billion.
At 12:53
pm in the District, there was a crush at the Potter
check-in table at the Borders at 18th and L streets.
“I
should’ve kept that purple wand,” said Kiera Armantrout,
7, of Phoenix to her father, Jim, and sister, Alea, 10,
after learning that the bookstore would have a “Grand
Hallows Ball” costume party.
David
Lee Ridley, 23, had dashed over to Borders from a nearby
foreign-policy think tank in the afternoon to secure the
silver wristband that meant he would be in the second
group to get his 784-page Potter fix after midnight.
“I’m going to stay up all night to read it,” Ridley
said.
At 5:50
pm, Adam Rice, 32, of Alexandria arrived at A Likely
Story Children’s Bookstore, which was organizing a party
in Old Town. He said he spent the week “a wreck,”
avoiding news web sites that might ruin the ending.
“I’ve been honestly kind of freaking out about the
spoilers this week,” Rice said.
At 8:27
pm, at The Potter’s House café and bookstore in Adams
Morgan, bookstore manager Tom Taylor breathed relief: He
had found and retrieved 70 Deathly Hallows copies that
had been mistakenly delivered elsewhere. “That would
have been a lot of angry customers,” said Taylor,
dressed as Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in long
blue gown and hat.
Back in
the kitchen, manager Meade Hanna, dressed in the black
gown of Professor McGonagall, mourned the series’s
completion while brewing pumpkin juice and preparing
Chocolate Frogs.
“Would
you be up for holding the ceremonial cauldron at the
procession at midnight?” she asked another Potter fan.
At 9:10
pm, hundreds of people gathered at King and Royal
streets in Old Town Alexandria to watch a crowd of
Harrys, Hermiones and other characters compete in a
costume contest.
Trevor
Moore, 9, of
Fort Washington,
separated himself from the pack by limping across the
stage in a full-length brown leather jacket.
Yes!
Mad-Eye Moody it was, the Hogwarts professor.
Trevor’s
performance moved him to the front of the line at A
Likely Story to claim his book. “I’m getting the book
right at midnight, and I’m going to start as soon as
possible,” he said.
About 10
pm, more than 1,000 people jammed Diagon Alley in
Silver Spring, a.k.a.
Ellsworth Drive. McGinty’s Public House became the Leaky
Cauldron, serving up “Deathly Hallows” shepherd’s pie,
Fizzing Whizbee ice cream and Butterbeer, which was
actually Boddington’s ale. A caped robe thrown over a
mannequin turned the Marimekko shop into Madam Malkins’s
boutique. And Muggles (nonmagical folks) mingled with
wizards and witches.
A woman
with a stuffed vulture on her head and black makeup
drank a cup of Butterbeer, and a magician made balloon
brooms in yellow and brown for children. A Death Eater,
wearing a mask, carried a sign that said, “The end is
nigh.”
“It is a
turning point in my life,” said Gardi Royce, 14, of
Silver Spring, with hair dyed white and the long cape
and solemn garb of Draco Malfoy, Potter’s Hogwarts
antagonist. “I am in love with Draco.”
One of
the organizers of the block party, Megan Linehan, 23, of
Silver Spring, wrote her senior thesis at American
University last year analyzing the battle between Harry
and Voldemort as a conflict between different political
and cultural systems. Harry stood for a heterogeneous
society of Muggles and wizards that is more open to
change, she said, while Voldemort represented a closed
society structured by racial hierarchies and resistant
to change. She got a B-plus, she said.
“I was,
like, can I have this party? Please!” Linehan said.
Minutes
before
midnight, Temar Powers, 37, stood in line with her sons to claim one
of the first copies from A Likely Story because, she
said, the Hogwarts kids seemed like part of the family.
“It’s a concluding experience with these fictitious
friends,” she said. “You’d gladly pick up your friends
at the airport in the middle of the night. Same thing.”
Midnight: Screams erupted outside the Silver Spring Borders when the
book went on sale.
William
Winstead, 10, his twin sister, Talia, and his brother,
Trenton, 9, of Vienna, held their Deathly Hallows aloft
like trophies.
“It
feels like I just won first prize at the Olympics,”
William said.
All
three quickly opened up their books and dived in. They
said they didn’t plan to skip ahead and would read all
night. |
