BY MARY ANNE ROSS
Correspondent
KEATS LONDON Morgan and Staci Brown, of East Brunswick, were the first to get a copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” at midnight Saturday after camping out at Barnes & Noble, Route 18, starting at 8:30 a.m. Friday. There was magic in the air Friday night as hundreds of Harry Potter fans eagerly waited outside the East Brunswick Barnes & Noble for their chance to purchase “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
The line wrapped around the store to the side entrance of Macy’s and was full of young people dressed as wizards, Hogwarts students and evil death eaters, all mingling pleasantly with ordinary muggles (nonmagic humans).
“Honk for Draco!” one girl shouts as cars pass. Another group counters, “Honk for Harry!”
The mass gathering of young and old was in anticipation of the midnight release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and purportedly the last in J.K. Rowling’s series of Potter novels.
Katherine Lian Cui, who will soon turn 9 and attends Chittick Elementary School in East Brunswick, was in line dressed as a wizard.
PHOTOSBY JEFF GRANIT staff At left: Among those celebrating the release of the new Harry Potter book was Lindsea Chartier-Vignapiano, 10, her brother Elric, 9, and Kristie Dominguez, who attended the “Harry Potter 7” party at the South River Public Library Monday night. At right: Ally Errico, 10, gets set to pin the glasses on Harry Potter as David Dziuba, 14, adjusts her goggles. “I’m Chochang, the girl that Harry likes,” she explained. She and her mother, Ying Lin, waited nearly two hours for the book.
“My son has read all the books. Usually I get them from the library. But this is the last book,” Ying Lin said, explaining the late-night excursion.
Chelsea Shields, 13, also of East Brunswick, and her cousin Laura, visiting from New York, were not complaining about the wait.
“I’ve read all the books. I just want to see what’s going to happen,” Chelsea said.
If awards were given for waiting, sisters Morgan and Staci Brown would be the winners, having waited since the store opened at 9 a.m.
“I wanted to be the first one to come in,” said Morgan, a 14-year-old Churchill Junior High School student. She and Staci, who is going into her junior year at East Brunswick High School, took turns waiting and gave each other breaks to sit down and eat.
Both are also fans of the Potter movies. The books have the details, Staci noted, but the movies let you see the action. Their mother, Josephine, and their Chihuahua-mix dog, complete with a wizard costume, joined them later in the day.
“I haven’t read the books, but I have enjoyed the movies,” Josephine said. “They wanted to go when [the latest movie] first came out, and they waited four hours until 12 midnight. I was at work all day, so I was just too tired.”
Inside Barnes & Noble, the names of those who waited in line were checked against the preorder list. Only those who had reserved the book received a wrist band, which enabled them to leave and come back to buy the book at midnight.
“The books are already here, but they’re just about under lock and key,” said Abby Marra, the store’s community relations manager. “We have been planning this event for a month. We have about 30 people on duty tonight.”
For those sticking it out until the stroke of midnight at Barnes & Noble, there was plenty to do. Visitors could guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, test themselves at trivia, or have their palms read by fortune teller Lisa Dittman, of Brick. Dittman herself is a Potter reader.
“Especially the first few, she really pulled a lot of the names and places from mythology and legends,” Dittman said. She stressed, however, that the term wizard is a misnomer.
“There is no such thing as a wizard in most nature-based religions,” she said.
Fans had different reasons for liking the book.
“I grew up with these books,” said Shara Lasardo, 19, of Milltown. “I’ve been reading them since I was 11 or 12.”
“I love the way J.K. Rowling creates an entire world that, even though it is so far-fetched, it’s so believable,” said Laura Slockbower, 19, of Spotswood.
Her friend Kelly Rooney, 19, of North Brunswick, was with her in line and had seen spoilers about the book on the Internet. Slockbower did not want to hear any of it, though.
“I haven’t been on the Internet for three days,” she said.
In Rowling’s world, ordinary objects often have magical qualities. The Brown sisters liked the stairs that move around the school, for example. Tom Losinski liked the portraits on the wall. “They could talk, and the characters in one could visit the characters in other rooms,” he said.
“My favorite spell is ‘ridiculous,’ ” said Nicholas Romanofsky, 9, of East Brunswick, who was dressed like his favorite character, Harry Potter.
“If you cast it on someone, it makes them look ridiculous,” he said.
The East Brunswick Public Library had its own Harry Potter celebration. Fifty of the books had been reserved but could not be picked up by patrons until midnight. The library also raffled off 20 books and had special activities starting at 10 p.m. The staff kept kids busy making magic wands and Hogwarts school banners, and playing trivia games while their weary parents drank coffee and settled in chairs with magazines and books. A magic show started at 11.
The event was well attended
“About 300 people came out,” said Josh Carlson, the teens’ librarian.
Usha Darishipudi and her husband, Subhas, brought their son Samrat, who is in fifth grade, and daughter Sailaja, who is in the ninth grade, as well as their neighbor, Brinda Beqnerji, an eighth-grader.
“I haven’t read any of the books, but she tells me all about it,” Usha said. Subhas said he likes the movies but had not read the books. Their daughter was hoping to be one of the lucky ones.
“I didn’t reserve a book in time, so I’m hoping I will win the lottery. If I do, I will stay up all night and read it,” Sailaja said.
Some of Harry’s fans decided to take a simpler route to obtaining the book.
“I went to Pathmark right after 12 o’clock and went through the self checkout,” said East Brunswick High School graduate Payel Ghosh. “There’s no magic to waiting in those long lines.”