Harry Potter and the Midnight Release Party

A new book sparks that good ol' nostalgia 

If I said Fritz and I really joined in the festivities at the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child midnight release party at Books & Company in Oconomowoc, Umbridge would feed me veritaserum and find out I'm lying through my teeth. We got there a few minutes after midnight, just as a dramatic reading of Act One was finishing up. We strolled in, shelled out the monies (here JK Rowling, just take it all!), snapped a quick pic, and called it a night. Five minutes, tops.

But when we pulled up, there were two girls huddled just outside the shop's front door, sitting cross-legged and using the light from their phones to read. Talk about a trip down memory lane. In the glory days of Harry Potter, my friends and I actually made the 10:00 news while camped out at the Mayfair Barnes & Noble for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We then went back to my parents house and took turns reading from chapter 1 before sleep set in. I remember we stumbled over the pronunciation of "Scrimgeour." 

When Dealthy Hallows was released, we did another midnight party — this time at Schwartz Books, which has since closed. We dressed in our kind-of-costumes and decked out our friend Shea's red van (Mama Roja) with giant white poster boards with "Rolling 4 Rowling," "Will break 4 Hippogriffs," and "Honk if you <3 Harry" scrawled in sharpee and highlighter. Yeah, we got some honks.

While waiting in a snaking line for midnight and the book that would allow us to all die happy, we amused ourselves by re-enacting the photos on Harry Potter merch (Rachelle is the wand, HELLO).

We also took selfies before selfies were a thing (really). Each one was a countdown of the minutes before Potter number seven. The excitement in these pics is still palpable. 11:59... MIDNIGHT!

Fast forward to present day. My excitement for this new chapter in the Potter world isn't what it used to be. Don't misunderstand me: YOU CANNOT AVADA KEDAVRA MY LOVE OF POTTER. I'm just not going into the Cursed Child script with high hopes. In fact, I've only read about 20 pages and I've already had it for three days (I'm a monster!). What few non-spoiler-y reviews I've read have not been glowing, so the whole thing makes me nervous. But I'm sure as hell going to read this script, and then we can all talk about how we're glad our hopes weren't too high to begin with, or how JK's still got it, or whatever. Or we can just get all nostalgic for our own personal Mama Roja.

Now where's that pensieve?