Everyone joined in the countdown as the clock ticked toward midnight, eyes on the fat book picturing a bespectacled boy’s outstretched hand.
“Seven hours, and worth every minute!” yelled one woman, holding her copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” aloft as she ran a victory lap through the Tattered Cover’s Colfax Avenue store.
Exuberantly costumed and even giddier with anticipation, hundreds of Harry Potter fans crowded bookstores and some venues — like Best Buy and The Wizard’s Chest — whose shelves rarely house literature, anxious to learn the ultimate fate of Harry, Hermione, Ron, Hagrid, Snape, Voldemort and the other residents of J.K. Rowling’s celebrated Harry Potter series.
The ambient noise approached the level of a tight Quidditch game, as people waited in line to drink versions of butterbeer and sample other cuisine inspired by Rowling’s books. Bags of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, the jelly beans that provide a mouthful of surprise (caramel or earwax?) with each bite, were nearly as ubiquitous as wizard hats and maroon-and-gold Gryffindor scarves.
“I wanted to be a little different,” said Siena Easley, 18, who dressed up as Mad Eye Moody, complete with pop-eye and vivid scars.
Easley and her 12-year-old sister, Jaidee, who costumed herself as wild-haired professor Tonks, were part of a costumed crowd that Harry Potter party-hopped from The Wizard’s Chest to the Tattered Cover to a Barnes & Noble outlet.
Like scores of other fans, they partied with hand-carved wands in hand, tokens that signaled their devotion to Harry and his fellow students at Hogwarts, the famous school for wizards and witches.
Sophia Ramsey, 11, crafted wands from chopsticks, glitter and glue, planning to present them to friends but wound up selling some at 50 cents a pop to excitable Potter fans at the Tattered Cover’s Colfax store.
Between activities — being assigned to a Hogwarts house by a talking hat, quaffing butterbeer and polyjuice potion and making golden snitches — talk inevitably turned to speculation about what lies between the pages of the books strictly sequestered until 12:01 a.m. today.
Will Harry triumph over Voldemort, a villain so evil that many characters refuse to speak his name? Will the apparently pernicious Snape prove to be worth Dumbledore’s trust?
More pressingly, who will die? Rowling has warned that at least one beloved character will perish in this final installment.
“Harry,” said Mary Monks, age 17, who was costumed as the despicable Dolores Umbridge, a nefarious Ministry of Magic witch.
“It’s gonna be Harry. Or it’s gonna be Ron. But I think Harry’s gone.”
Other reluctant predictions: Hagrid, the lovable ungainly giant; Ron, Hermione or another beloved student. Some fans refused to guess, and few planned to cheat by peeking at the last chapter.
“I’m not going to read it as fast as I can, because I don’t really want it to end,” said Ramsey, who estimates that she’s read the first 6 books in the series at least 3 times each.
“I wish Rowling would write six more.”
But Leah Wolberg, 19, who began reading the Harry Potter books when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” first appeared, said he looked forward to seeing what sort of literary magic is up Rowling’s sleeve.
“It’s going to be really weird not having a new Harry Potter book any more,” he said.
“But I’m interested in seeing what Rowling does next. This is just her first series. She has better heights to go.”
