“There were a bunch of kids screaming when it started,” said junior Abby Lekstutis.
“The enthusiasm of the crowd was overwhelming. One girl in our theatre gave a constant shout-out of how many minutes we had left, and after each one, everyone cheered,” said sophomore Rachel Stone.
Junior Suzanne Kim added, “There were so many people. There were probably 3 lines wrapping around for the IMAX theater. I got there really late, which means I only got there four hours early instead of eight hours early like I had wanted in order to get a good seat.”
Stone described the theater. “I saw red and gold everywhere, there were brooms and wands galore, and you could hear songs from the Harry Potter Musical ringing all over.”
These screams were simply a display of the enthusiastic and passionate emotion characteristic of the serious Harry Potter fans.
“Some people definitely went all out”, affirmed Lekstutis. Kim added that, “Most people dressed up, some people even dressed up as Hagrid. There was a lot of cheering, clapping and singing. People even started singing ‘Harry Potter Puppet Pals.”
“I saw costumes of everyone from the series,” Stone commented. “There was Rita Skeeter, Volemort, Hermoine, Harry, Ron, and Luna Lovegood. I dressed up as Parvati Patil, a Gryffindor. One of my favorites that I saw was a girl who had dyed her hair black just for the premiere so she could be Bellatrix Lestrange.”
Avid fans had been waiting for the day for quite some time. Kim stated that she, “literally got my ticket right when the tickets came out. Every day since September 1, I would refresh [the website] movietickets.com until I saw the midnight showing coming up.”
“I had to get a 4.0 GPA during the first quarter in order to negotiate with my parents about going. It was tough, but knowing how amazing it was going to be was really motivating and made it so worth it,” said Stone.
For most people who have read and understood the books, this level of anticipation and excitement is perfectly reasonable.
“It’s the fact that we’ve basically grown up with Harry Potter that was the exciting part. I’m also assuming most of the people read the last book so another part of it would be because the book was amazing, so people want to see it come to life,” Kim explained. “I wanted to go because I loved the book. I wanted to see how the movie would portray the book, and since I loved it so much I wanted to be the first to watch it with the first showing.”
“I think people were especially excited because it’s one of the last ones and people want to make the most of it,” Lekstutis added.
Stone confirmed her complete devotion to the series, “This begins the final battle between Harry and Voldemort and the intensity of the book made the anticipation for the movie to come out so high. This is what we read during story-time when we were little, and now that we are older, it’s been something that has grown with us, and truly hasn’t died. For me, the seventh book was my favorite, so I was really waiting to see what they did in the movie. There was no way that I could ever have been tired because there was simply so much to be excited for.”
Stone also mentioned friend Ashley Johnson, who, she believes is the “epitome of avid fan”. Stone described Johnson, “She’s a sophomore at Langley. She, as of Saturday, has already seen the movie twice. She skipped school on Friday to go. She can give you the names of over 200 Harry Potter characters off the top of her head and give you the location of a funny quote down to the book and name of the chapter. She has watched the movies so many times that she can recognize which movie she is watching simply by seeing the clouds in the background when they show the WB logo.”
Since this movie was only part one of the “epic finale”, one can only imagine how much hype the final movie will bring.