I’m totally swamped with work, but it’s the eve of Harry Potter’s birthday, and seven years since Deathly Hallows was released (aha, and it’s nearly Thursday) so I’m celebrating with a trip down memory lane: how we rang in the final installment of Harry Potter, unearthed from an old cd of photos that luckily outlived Multiply.
I had already been writing for Manila Bulletin then, and got invited to a Harry Potter party at Powerbooks the night before the release so of course I asked my cousin Dianne to come along (yes, this whole blog entry will look like a scene right off Rainbow Rowell’s ‘Fangirl’ — we’re so Cather and Wren). I think the invite said something like, “come in your wizard robes” and for some reason we decided it was our last chance (ha!) to wear a costume so we quickly threw together our costumes a few days before. Quite a feat, I must say, as at that time there were no costumey stuff to be found before Halloween — I couldn’t even find a full wig (whereas these days, that’d be the least of your problems) and we pretty much had to make everything (I made a Gryffindor lion hat, a Quibbler, radish earrings and a cork necklace; Dianne made our wands, a pointy hat, and patched up her clothes!). And that is how we ended up going as Luna and Tonks.
In those days (I sound like a grandma) cosplayers weren’t as mainstream, and technically it was our first ever public appearance in costume (LOL!) and I remember we had the car circle the Greenbelt driveway several times because we couldn’t work up the courage to get out of the car and make our way up the escalator to Powerbooks in costume. Hahaha. Looking back, we were such ninnies about it. And when we finally got up to the party area, there was quite a commotion because while other people came in robes, we were the only ones in character. LOL.
Like, people were getting photos taken with us. Haha.
The party was so much fun — they’d really gone to the effort of dressing up the store like Hogwarts, and the party area magically looked like the Great Hall, floating candles, and all, and I’m sorry I don’t have better photos.
There were games! I think this one involved people arranging the books in numerical order while blindfolded.
And I don’t have pictures but Dianne and I joined (and won) the trivia contest (woot for the 3 D’s of Apparition!).
After the party, we ended up taking more photos…
We even met Nagini!
We went home near midnight…
But we couldn’t sleep much because we were so excited; we wanted to be in line early the morning after (7 am release)! We were back at the store before sunrise (we still weren’t first in line!), in our “In Snape We Trust” shirts because we were convinced Snape wasn’t a bad guy (doubters, take that!) — we had spent many hours that summer formulating theories on how Snape was the hero of the series.
And we had a lot of time to kill so we were peering through the shop window:
And the line was getting longer!
Excited much?!?
Finally…
And that’s our friend, Mika, right on time! :D
I just realized we have no pictures after claiming our books — most likely we were too busy tearing into them. I remember I went straight home, locked myself in the room to read and bawled my eyes out.
It really was the end of an era.
Aw, so cute! You two haven’t changed, apart from adding Benedict to your roster of loves. ;)
HP7 will always be special for me because that was the first book since book 3 that I read months after its release – Alonso was born 2 weeks before the book came out, so I didn’t get my copy, nor get to read it, til a while later. Now, Alonso has just turned 7. Time flies indeed!
The fangirling has reached new levels, Iya, hahahaha. It was only natural, I suppose, we had all that energy to channel post-Harry Potter :D