Harry Potter Party: Dutton’s Brentwood Bookstore

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For us, the Dutton’s Brentwood Bookstore Harry Potter party is a family affair. We’re here with Liz’s husband Paul and nine-year-old daughter Grace, as well as Sonja’s mother and nine-year-old son Luke.

We’ve read every Harry Potter book several times, beginning when our kids were five. For Luke and Grace, Harry has been an almost continuous family experience: He has made up a good deal of bed-time reading, occupied a large portion of travel time (listening to the extraordinary Jim Dale read), and offered an incentive to learn to read themselves.

The kids feel very prepared for tonight, having gone through all the books again over the past few months — all 3,341 pages. Don’t think they can’t quote the number. And yes, they’re in costume: Grace as a Mundunga Fletcher, heretofore unknown niece of Mundungus — her robes open to reveal an assortment of aids to pranksters — and Luke as Albus Dumbledore, withered hand and all. Dutton’s has planned a “stump-the-experts” trivia booth, manned by local teenagers; the kids are dying to give it a try … but they’ve been rejecting question after question, saying, “Oh, they’ll know that!”

We began the evening watching J. K. Rowling online as she read the first chapter at midnight in Britain. She read flawlessly for 20 minutes. The kids fled, shrieking that they didn’t want to hear it. They wanted to read it for themselves.

The Dutton’s cafe is serving butter beer, pumpkin juice, fire whiskey, cauldron cake, Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans, Cockroach Clusters, Licorice Toads. And it’s all free! Muggles, wizards and mudbloods are lining up to exchange their pre-paid receipts for vouchers that will get them books at the witching hour, even as dozens more are paying now. We have to say, the butter beer tastes like what they probably drink in Hogsmeade, but the fire whiskey seems to be Red Hot candies soaked in something sweet, maybe ginger ale.

Sonja Bolle and Liz Dubelman