Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Muggles take over British streets
By Caitlyn Prendergast
Daily Collegian (Penn State)
07/23/2007

(U-WIRE) LONDON — For the third and final time, Waterstone's bookstore opened its doors at midnight on Friday to "London's Biggest Harry Potter Party" where thousands of fans waited to get a copy of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Jenny Bass, 18, from Seattle, Washington, spent more than 11 hours in flight before arriving in London last week. Waterstone's employees told her she was guaranteed a copy if she was in line before 10:30 p.m.

By 11 p.m., the line had wrapped around the bookstore to Jermyn Street, continued for a couple blocks, crossed the street, continued for an additional three or four blocks, turned left at St. James and continued for four more blocks.

Bass finally got her copy at about 3 a.m.

"I love Harry Potter because it's a different world," she said. "There aren't very many magical things in our pop culture, and the books bring me back to my childhood."

Fans descended on Waterstone's from all over the world, including France, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Canada and the United States. One sign read, "15 hours from Mexico to London, so what?!"

Sisters Sophie and Mylis Fraichot traveled from France for the release. Although they had some trouble with English, that did not stop them from lining up at London's Waterstone's early Friday and dressing up.

"Our cloaks are handmade," Sophie said.

Because of time zone differences, the midnight release took place five hours before American stores opened their doors.

Many fans said they wouldn't have missed the midnight release; the first person in line said she had been saving her spot since 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Though Waterstone's had held queue parties for the releases of the past two books, employees said they had higher expectations for the sale of the last book, a minimum of 2,000 people by midnight, one employee estimated.

Sporting a black T-shirt with "Muggle" printed in white on the back, the employee said Waterstone's expected to sell "hundreds of thousands" of the new book within the first 24 hours of its release.

Planned activities for the fans included entertainers, look-a-likes and theme drinks. At 8 p.m., www.MuggleNet.com, a popular Harry Potter fan Web site, hosted its biggest ever podcast from the queue party.

The majority of the fans in the queue wore costumes, some with face paint as well. The costumes included Dumbledores, a Bellatrix Lestrange, Nimbus 2000s and the Hogwarts castle.

Some fans walked the length of the line trying to get others to sign up for Dumbledore's Army and to join the Death Eaters.

Two other girls surveyed the crowd in the line on whether they thought Severus Snape was good or evil.

A woman dressed as Professor Lupin in werewolf form went through the line offering chocolate to fans as Lupin had done to Harry when they first met on the train to Hogwarts.

When it was all over, fans from the beginning to the end of the Harry Potter series left Waterstone's in the early hours of the morning to finally read the beginning of the end.

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