Harry Potter and the Midnight Release

I hope that by now you have all read, enjoyed, and dissected “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” For those of you who think that you are too old, too good, or above reading a book designed to appeal to children and teens, I have this to say – Get over yourself!

One of our latest nights out in Las Vegas was spent waiting in line to purchase the new Potter book. And I wasn’t alone – there were hundreds of people in the Fashion Mall that evening waiting for the same thing. This was my third midnight release party and I wasn’t going to miss out on a single minute!

The Borders that hosted Potter Night started with a showing of the fourth movie, “Goblet of Fire.” (Hubby and I had seen and somewhat enjoyed “Order of the Phoenix" the previous week with SIL back in Illinois.) As the movie wound down, you started to see people edging toward what they hoped would be a line for books. Some people watched the Borders employees so carefully that people not realizing what was going on might have thought they were double agents and we were back in the Cold War era. “She has a microphone. Follow her!” “The tall one is moving toward the escalator. I repeat toward the escalator!” There were even news crews there to observe the melee.

When the movie *finally* ended, we all eagerly looked around for someone in charge to tell us all what to do. Unfortunately, the girl with the microphone was not terribly charismatic and didn’t get her point across very well. All I could hear was, “Concentrate on the room of requirement,” which I thought was really weird and vague. I left Hubby lounging on a comfy looking chair while I sprinted to where I hoped a line would form. Then I noticed the floor beneath the movie screen rising up.

The room of requirement had arrived.

I really wish I had thought to bring my camera that night as Borders did a *great* job of putting this display together. Uncharismatic girl aside, watching the room rise out of the recesses of the Fashion Mall was very cool.

What was less cool was the incredibly poorly organized “line” to purchase your book. First of all, everyone received the same colour bracelet so any attempt at staggering the purchasers was completely lost. There was also a lot of pushing and shoving – I, of course, did not take part in any of that. Mostly…

Hubby and I got back to our hotel room shortly after 1 a.m. from the “midnight” release party. After reading the epilogue to verify who had died, I actually went to bed fairly early that night and dreamed about Harry, Hermione, Ginny, and Ron and the adventures they were having in that orange book on my night stand.

Finally, the book was fairly good – not great, but a wonderful few hours of reading. I won’t ruin the ending but will say that the death that affected me the most was Dobby’s. *sniff* That little guy died for something and someone he believed in – he was valiant when a lot of people in the wizarding world were acting like cowards. I enjoyed the fact that a lot of clues that started all the way back with book one were neatly tied up – or knotted up into some sort of Gordian knot that no one other than JK Rowling will ever fully comprehend.

So now we’re done with Harry Potter and all that we have left are fanfics and dissections of what came before. I’ll miss Harry but I look forward to giving these books (new copies, not mine) to other children who can discover the wonderfully magical world of Harry and his friends.