Spritopias and the Deathly Hallows

ACHTUNG BABY! NO REAL SPOILERS!

HOGWARTS – ASTRONOMY TOWER

Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton is pursuing Harry Potter in the climax of an epic Wizard’s Duel – the junior senator from New York has the boy hero cornered, all seems lost…

HILLARY CLINTON: There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. You do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power! Join me and I will complete your training. With our combined strength we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the Middle East.

HARRY POTTER: I'll never join you!

HILLARY CLINTON: If you only knew the power of the dark side. Dumbledore never told you what happened to your father.

HARRY POTTER: He told me enough! He told me Voldemort killed him.

HILLARY CLINTON: No. Bill Clinton is your father. Shocked, Harry looks at Clinton in utter disbelief.

HARRY POTTER: No. No. That's not true! That's impossible! That would make you my mother, wouldn’t it?

HILLARY CLINTON: AVADA KADAVRA!

A week ago preparations began in earnest for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Books were reread, movies viewed again, predictions made and costuming prepared.

Normally I eschew costuming for these events and if called upon to don a costume I claim to be Seamus Finnegan in street clothes or a Muggle. Deathly Hallows is the final installment of the Harry Potter series – unless J.K. Rowling decides to besmirch her good name and pull a George Lucas on us – and this auspicious occasion called for either formal wear or a costume.

Seamus Finnegan is my favorite minor character only because I bear an unfortunate resemblance to the actor who portrays him in the films. I decided to research Seamus Finnegan and settled on making Kenmare Kestrel practice jerseys as our costumes. The Kestrels are Finnegan’s favorite Quiddich team. This proved to be a bad idea when it was time for the book release, but like many things in life it seemed like a good idea at the time. Using the description I designed a mirrored double k logo and my sister helped me put them on shirts for Emily, Hanna and myself. If I had known that more people were going to be in our party I would have made enough for an entire team of Quiddich players. That would have solidified my position as a leading citizen in the Forest of Nerds. However, Emily’s pregnant friend Lisa dressed as the quaffle rendering our costumes lame – well, more lame than your general costume. Justin made the shirts cooler than I had hoped by somehow naming the logo the "Golden Snatch" in a misnomer of the Golden Snitch.

Deathly Hallows is a great literary adventure. Giving details on the book would be uncouth, however I will say that Rowling handles twists and turns in plot and character like a Volkswagen on a winding mountain road. The suspense and action do not let up until a very lame epilog. Lame as it is, I would do the same thing for reasons I will divulge later. I finished the book in twenty-two hours and was happy that my predictions were right and wrong where appropriate. I am right, for those who pay attention, where my opinions mirror She-Who-Must-Not-Be-First-Named*.

Getting the book was an adventure as well.

Emily sent me to the designated Barnes and Noble to pick up tickets for our party – Emily, her literate sister, her coworkers and myself. I arrived at the Barnes and Noble late – the line would open at nine and I was there at half past eight. People had lined up at half of seven in the morning for the tickets – in costume – and I was so far back in the line that I was waiting in the alley like Kaneesha Bangladesh. I regret that my camera died given the costume parade and classy locale.

The worst part of being in line, I wrongly assumed, was going to be the ubiquitous dry-humping college students. Then again, dry-humping college students are an American tradition and no Harry Potter book release or amusement park can do without them. The real problem was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was in line behind me with her children. Mrs. Onassis’ children had no problem being in line, one was the stock greasy teen boy with new and improved shaggy long hair that no one taught him to wash or comb and his sister who was too cool for Harry Potter and remained happily, rudely plugged into her iPod almost the entire time. I regretted now that I had left my iPod in the car, too.

Mrs. Onassis decided that her children would certainly starve to death in the never-ending line for Deathly Hallows tickets and went to the Barnes and Noble Starbucks to provision them for their quest. Unfortunately, she got them the wrong drinks and was soundly berated by her children and after much discussion it was decided that the only thing she had done wrong was switch the children’s drinks. My mother would have dumped them on our heads rather than listen to us berate her and we would not have remained in a line to get a book later in the day. My mother is some exception to a parenting rule about the children being in charge.

The rest of the time in the line was spent listening to her complaints about the length of the line and the time spent in it, which totaled ten minutes. She would occasionally attempt to engage her children and the people around her in conversation until she decided to recount how her children were ungrateful, if you can imagine ungrateful teens, for when she took them to London and they saw Daniel Radcliffe in Equus – which the boy said ‘ruined’ the movies for him and elicited me to say, “If I had seen Harry Potter’s ‘wand,’ it would have ruined the movies for me, too” this too was ill-advised because it caused the woman to start a conversation about people being prudish about nudity and sexuality in art and caused the woman in front of me to ask her to ‘shut up.’

When I got to the end of the line Mrs. Onassis had a fit because of the amount of tickets I was getting. There was no prohibition in getting tickets for others and I was armed with a list of five or six people. I received all but the last remaining “A Boarding Group” tickets and was nearly assaulted by Mrs. Onassis for standing in line so useful people could work. I further enraged her when the manager pointed out that one in our party had asked for a paperback of the book and I commented, “Don’t mind Shawn, he’s retarded.” To quell her anger I claimed that Shawn was indeed retarded and later that evening met him for the first time and advised him to act dumb or drool if we encountered the woman again.

That evening, when we returned to Barnes and Noble dressed in Kestrel’s practice shirts, we were glad for Emily’s friends. In year’s past we have gone to must better release celebrations and this one was clearly an evening dependent on the participants more than the events presented. Our costumes because an object of discussion with two very bizarre people – one who claimed to be a fan of the Kestrels who attended every game and sang us our fight song. Another claimed to be on a real Quiddich team and tried to talk Quiddich with us. We ran away from the first person and I used the Spritopias Offendus spell on the second. The spell was performed simply, I saw two very large people with someone who was clearly malnourished and suggested privately to Lisa that they stop eating her food, at the top of my lungs.

The main entertainment for us was Justin securing free drinks for some of us at the world’s busiest Starbucks – surreptitiously – and trying to decide if people were in costume of if they were dressed in the clothing they would normally wear. We also had to ward off two people who had accosted us earlier when the Spritopias Offendus spell wore off and at one point my friend Ana arrived with a friend of hers and her friend said, “There is a man with a koala in a costume” and Ana said, “Oh, that’s got to be Christopher.”

There was also the subplot of Lauren, Emily’s sister, who came with us despite not having seen the movies or read the books. A Muggle in our world, she attended the festivities to be with her sisters and wore a shirt that said, “nice from now on,” and by magic changed to, “nice for as long as I can tolerate this bawdy band of social misfits, Jesus come take me now.” She had several moments of disbelief but was the best at figuring out who was in a costume and who dressed like that every day.

When midnight approached it was not unlike New Year’s Eve – except most of these people are probably not at large gatherings of humans at the dates designated on the calendar – everyone was giddy with anticipation and strangely unruly. The woman who sang us the Kestrel’s fight song ran up and down the aisle imploring people to behave while the man I repelled using Spritopias Offendus started to push people. It was later discovered this person did not have a ticket.

Luckily, we were in the first group to get our books and left the store books in hand, triumphant. Unfortunately, it took us longer to leave the parking lot than it did to stand in line to get the tickets or the books as someone parked us into our space that Lauren had procured for us earlier in the evening – the car being half on the curb.

I was able to finish the book quickly – wanting to avoid Stan’s persistent and ill-informed spoilers – placing my mouth under embargo until Emily finishes the book. So far it’s the best of the books but that is just my opinion. I have no complaints about the book or anything that happens in the story except the corny epilog.

*Citizens of the People’s Soviet Socialist Republic of the Spritopistan out of reverence, like ancient Hebrews fearing using God’s name, will not use Dr. Ashby’s first name and often refer to her simply as She-Who-Must-Not-Be-First-Named.

Comments

[Suburban Island]

Thanks for inspiring me to go to the bookstore for the release party - it was so much fun. I loved the book - which I just finished last night. From my perspective it was elegantly done and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. The epilogue worked okay for me.

[Terri]

The epilogue was kind of lame, but necessary I suppose.

Darn! I wish Michael had taken pictures of people in costume while he was hanging out in the cafe with the baby! You should have seen this team of quiditch players! They had green brooms with stir-ups, green goggle and track suits. They were stunning! LOL!

[golfwidow]

JRo was just on Today and she says she's going to do an encyclopedia in a few years. I am delighted.