Magical Midnight

Yes - you guessed it - Sophie and I attended a release party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Out of the three parties in town we chose the one at Barnes and Noble for two reasons:

1) Marie, the organizer, is a wonderful person and always such a big help to me when I order books for the RRVWP and 2) it started at 9 pm vs. 10 pm and I thought maybe we'd be home in bed by 10 or so. I was wrong by 2 1/2 hours.

Early on Friday Sophie's friend Grace came over and they made plans for the big event - Sophie decided that she even though she'd like to dress as Hermoine, she looked more like Professor McGonegal and Grace decided to spray her blonde hair red and be Ron. They raided the Halloween costume box, came up with wands and there we were. At one point Sophie was even digging through the drawers in our bedroom looking for something for me to wear but I put a stop to that rather quickly.

We arrived at the party at 9:10 and it was already full of muggles - there were some wizards scattered around and one dementer, but mostly muggles. Yvette, Grace's mom, joined us shortly after and we chased after the girls as they went from year to year completing the activities and shouting out answers to the trivia questions that periodically sounded from the PA system. Around Year 5, we ran into Juliette and Oliver and from then on Juliette, Grace and Sophie were a team, trying to find the Snitch and following around Snape to see what he was up to. In the meantime, Yvette, Laurie, and I drank our butterbeers and chatted in the Great Hall.

Since we already had a book coming in the mail early Saturday morning (Thanks Jodi the mail carrier!) I thought we would get out of there before midnight, but Sophie convinced me otherwise because she thought maybe Harry Potter himself would show up and pass out the books. That didn't happen and by 12:30, we were in the car, yawning and reliving the favorite parts of the night.

Now it's Monday and neither one of us is done with the book - we're taking turns reading it. Sophie reads two chapters and then gives it to me so I can read two chapters, etc... But as she is such an early riser, she gets a huge headstart on me in the mornings and is only pages away from finishing; me, I'm only on chapter 15. But I'll get there - maybe even by tonight.