Caroline Schneider made a deal with her dad. She would clean up her room if he would let her stay up late and buy the new Harry Potter book at midnight, when it went on sale.
“I inspected her room, and it was shockingly clean,” said James Schneider, 14-year-old Caroline’s dad and a bankruptcy judge in Baltimore. A deal is a deal, and there they were, standing at Daedalus Books & Music in a long line of mildly exhilarated Potter fanatics, many in costume and goggle glasses, waiting for the witching hour.
In her hand, Caroline clutched a blue, numbered card, issued at the counter, indicating that she was one of 80 walk-ins who would snag one of the 160 copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” the Belvedere Square store had procured. The other 80 volumes were being reserved for customers who had ordered the book in advance.
There were similar scenes in other bookstores not only across Baltimore and its suburbs – a Barnes & Noble store in Pikesville, for instance, had lines of eager “Hallows” buyers snaking outside as far as the eye could see – but in cities across the Western hemisphere, as fans of the enormously popular books clamored to discover how the seven-volume series ends.
To lend an air of theatricality to the occasion, and to distract the waiting hordes, the Daedalus store had hired a group of local performers, known as the Calefaction Society, to do their act outside on the sidewalk, juggling and spinning objects afire. But most of the Potter heads – sometimes called muggles, like those in J.K. Rowlings’ books who are without magical talents – opted to forsake such trifles and stay inside, lest some evil power (Voldemort himself?) wrest from them their place in line.
“I’ve got my number, so I’m good,” said Olivia Brann, 16, a theater student at the Baltimore School for the Arts, proudly displaying a number 7 as she waited in line at Daedalus. “I just hope no one reveals the ending to me – that would really upset me. If I’m really into it, I might stay up all night.”
As the clock approached midnight, someone started counting down the seconds and everyone took up the cry, concluding with a riotous cheer. Four store attendants, including the manager, Sara Roberson, manned the counter, briskly exchanging cash and plastic for the orange-jacketed, 759-page tome.When Brann eventually made her way to the counter, the pace wasn’t brisk enough. “Give me my book,” she muttered impatiently under her breath as a counter clerk hovered in vain over the little machine that spits out credit-card receipts.
When the transaction was finally completed and Brann was handed her book, she said, “Oh, yeah.”
Remarking on the new tome’s heft, Brann said she had read “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the fourth in the series, in a mere three days. While “Hallows,” though longer, might be a breeze for someone like Brann, it was clearly about to tax some of the younger Potter fans at the store for whom it was way past normal bedtime.
“I’ll stay up reading as late as possible,” said Isabel Stevenson, 10, who was clad in a black Hogwarts robe and whose somewhat crimson eyes suggested that she was already losing her battle with exhaustion. “As long as I get two hours of sleep,” she added, waving a chopstick as a wand and prompting a laugh from her mother, Melina Turtle, who said Isabel was vastly underestimating her need for rest.
When she was handed her copy of “Hallows,” Isabel hugged it close while her mom paid the $25.15 price – discounted from the list price of $34.99. The book was a birthday present for Isabel, who reached her first decade on July 7 and who, her mom said, recently wrapped up a second run-through of the first six Potter books.
Not everyone snapping up the seventh one was pint-sized or adolescent. “I know a lot of adults who can’t wait for their kids to finish reading them,” said Thomas Horman, 44, who called himself a “bureaucrat” for the State of Maryland and who got into the Potter books after hearing Rowlings on the radio reading an excerpt from the second or third one.
Although she was leading her 4-year-old son Max by the arm, Kathy Osborn said she was there not to indoctrinate Max into the ways of wizardry but because she and her husband, Mark, are devoted Potter fans.
“I don’t think this will ever happen again in our lifetimes – so many people so excited about a single book,” she said. Then, looking down at her son, who was intently sucking a lollipop, she said, “I hope he remembers this.”
One woman who rushed into the store a moment after the last copy of “Hallows” might like to forget the whole thing. She looked stricken when told the bad news. “I keep missing it,” she said, suggesting she had already tried other bookstores.
Give up? Good lord no. “I have to go to Barnes & Noble,” she said, her voice full of purpose, as she whirled around and headed for the door.
