Unlike the gigantic, block-long bash held during the hardcover release, this was a smaller, casual affair. Just a few parents and their kids, with free crossword puzzles, word searches, a chance to build your own wand and potion, and the main event: the hourly trivia contest.
To be honest, I didn't want to play. OK, to be honest, I did. But I didn't want to play against kids. OK, I did want to play against kids, but I didn't want to be judged by the others in the store while doing so. It's embarrassing being the oldest person there who isn't a parent, but I witnessed a mom tie a six-year-old in the first contest, so it wouldn't be that awful, right?
I hung out in the back of the group (there were, say, a dozen people total, most of them kids, three or four of them teenagers, and me, the guy whose nine-year-old daughter was too sick to come but she asked him to enter and win the trivia contest for her), which turned out to be a strategic advantage, because I got asked last. By the time I was given my first question, we'd already lost about two or three kids, the young ones who didn't really know they were in a contest.
And the questions continued... and continued... I couldn't believe my luck - being asked Mad Eye Moody's first name? Easy! While the hard questions that I'd forgotten (the exact address of the Order of the Phoenix HQ) were thrust upon other, bewildered children.
In the end, there were three of us left - one was a pre-teen girl with her friend, and the other a young boy who had lost the earlier contest. I started to breathe easy, because I thought as finalists all three of us would get prizes.
This boy, to put it bluntly, was a nerd. If you were to talk in a stereotypical "nerd" voice, you would sound cooler than this kid. But he knew his Harry Potter... though he did get lucky twice, and would jump up and down and shout that it was just a wild guess, and if he met 10-year-old Kirk, they probably would've been friends. The girl didn't belong in the final three.
I thought, "OK, let's knock out this girl and then I'll concede to the nerd," and had my chance to succeed, too. You would have to name a character, and then the next player would have to say a character whose name begins with the first letter of their last name. Rubeus Hagrid -> Harry Potter -> Petunia Dursley -> Draco Malfoy, etc.
Given the letter P, I said, "Percy Weasley," and no one could think of a character whose name began with a W. I thought I had won, as both the girl and the nerd couldn't think of anyone, but then I had to come up with a suitable character... and I couldn't, either. D'oh! I forgot about Winky the House Elf or Wilhelmnina Grubbly-Plank, and so the contest continued to the very difficult three-star questions.
And that was the end of me. I'd only read Deathly Hallows a single time, during a feverish three-day period, and my retention was weak, at best. I could only recall one item left to Harry in Dumbledore's will, the girl got the next question wrong, and the contest went to the nerd.
Which is good, he wanted to win. First prize was a bag, and I thought, "Eff that, I have a much better bag, it's from the Gotham Girls Roller Derby. I don't need a new one," but second prize was a pin. And though I normally loathe pins, it would've been cool to wear at the Hogwarts Improvisation Society.
But there was no third prize! Bullshit! I got what every participant got - a poster featuring a mash-up of all seven covers. And... that's fine, but what good is it? I wanted a pin!
(Update: This is the pin. Seeing it now, I don't love it so much.)
I had to refrain myself from waiting for the next contest to try and win that pin. I thought of the memorable words of Dr. Henry Jones Sr., "Let it go, Indiana," and so I left, head held high, with a suitable parting gift for my imaginary daughter.
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