Potter Party
NO SPOILERS IN THIS POST.
It seems we were all both right and wrong. I'm reading DH right now, and so far it's exactly the Carpet Book - the only difference I've noted (which I already knew, and which was the only reason I doubted the Carpet Book was real) is the fact that though the Carpet Book is 700-odd pages, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in print is 607. So - it's been suggested (I don't remember by whom) that the Carpet Book is an earlier draft of DH, and I think that might be true.
Just back from the Potter Party, because my companion refused to stay any longer. I resent him for that, actually, because it was fun and there were people from fandom and there was a 500+ people queue. I don't see the point of unnecessary waiting in a queue, so when we arrived we secured ourselves a place in the queue, and then I strutted forward and found myself in front of the door, which opened right that moment, and we were allowed to go inside. And we were given numbers (me 12, said companion, whom I called and told to get here right this instant before it got too crowded inside, had 49).
And there were quizzes, and Hagrid was there, and McGonagall, and Tonks, and more people I didn't recognise. And I won a book written by 'a gifted thirteen-year-old' girl 'as a way to convey her message of peace to the world'. With a bookblurb!: "What does fighting bring us? Fear, hatred, misery and death."
Yeah. I was thrilled. (If there's anyone, anyone out there interested in a thirteen-year-old's Suestory, just let me know - I'll even pay for the shipment. Consider it - a gift.)
And there was a guy standing behind me, Chris, who won incredibly awesome posters of the books - and we were talking, sometime later, and it turned out that 1) we were both Dutch, 2) we both live in the same city, 3) he hangs out at the same places I do, so he even recognised me, though I had no idea who he was, and 4) he is the owner and creator of Potterdome.com - he worked for Mugglenet five years ago.
Which meant we could talk about fandom and the leaks and the Carpet Book (which he assured me was fake, and he said he's received an e-mail from Bloomsbury telling him who died, since he's a journalist and fansite owner and all - turns out I was right, the Carpet Book was real, and the person whom he was told would die actually survived the bloodbath that is Deathly Hallows). We exchanged MSN addresses and he wanted us to go to the Dutch release in November (the 17th) together.
I was literally photographed over 50 times (only nine times by companion), most of the times by journalists-photographers at first I didn't know why, until I saw the woman they'd hired as Bellatrix, and realised that I looked a lot more like the Bella Joanne described (though to be honest, just about everyone would've been a better Bellatrix than her - she had red/brown, auburnish hair, a red fluffy - thing on her head, was dressed in white, with a painted, white face - and she was a man dressed in drag). Even though I had Grindelwald's Mark on my forehead. And fandom shoutouts written on my arms n' stuff (Lily/Severus! Remus/Sirius! Gellert! Albus! Including the "/"s!), and green snakes on my fingernails.
It was weird, and uncomfortable (everyone who's met me in RL knows I hate photographs), and I hope, but know better than to believe, I won't be on a lot of web/newssites, not after the way I was photographed from a dozen different angles by various different photographers.
And, as I was one of the first twenty to enter the store, I was allowed to be one of the first to buy the actual book - numbers 3 through 20 were called upstairs (1 and 2 were ushered in once the doors opened) to get the book, and on the stairs we had to wait and then I spotteds Severus (Young!Severus, even) and stared like a mad fangirl and then we were allowed further up and I bought the book and then bought the Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them + Quidditch Through The Ages + Hogwarts Library Bookplate-set. And was photographed a bunch of times talking with Tonks. Who envied me already having read the book and now owning the book while she had to wait till the party was over before she could buy hers.
But the best part of my night? Outside the store, in front of a hundred, two hundred people still standing in the queue.
Severus.
I just... may have acted like a total fangirl. BUT! We took pictures together. And I very determinedly did not blush when I walked over to him, asked if he was Snape (as if he could've been anybody else, I ask you) and if I could please take a picture with him. WOULDN'T HAVE DONE THAT EVEN WITH ROWLING, PEOPLE.
But I wasn't a clingy, huggy teenage fangirl - but I was smiling broadly, which, since people seemed to think I was Bella, was very out of character.
:D:D:D:D SeverusSeverusSeverus! (It's like when me and ST went and met Wouter Hamel and got his autograph - we kept catching each other's eye and ST squeed "We got the autograph of Wouter Hamel! We got the autograph of Wouter Hamel!".)
And then I found Chris again and he squeed a little when I told him about me and Severus Snape, and I told him how he was wrong, wrong, because the Carpet Book was real, and then we talked about that, and he tried to make me tell him who died - and I mostly resisted (one was already a goner, everybody - well, almost everybody expected it, and I didn't exactly lie when I told him about Harry's fate - he just didn't know what I meant), and oh! I have Waterstone's balloons.
And then my companion really wanted to go, so we walked back, past the queue, and everybody was staring at me and muttering about the book and the balloons and again, people took pictures.
And now I've written this and
starrysummer said that Ms Scribe wrote the Carpet Book but it's not true, and I'm not going to say how much it cost me, financially and psychologically, to get here - I'm just going back to my lovely, lovely book.