The Last Premier - Party like a Potions Master!

HARRY POTTER PREMIER PARTY JULY 14th:
Candy, Potions, Prizes, Wizard drinks, Plastic snakes and plenty of fun!

A display on the potion table – cauldron and numerous witchy ingredients (snakeskins, aconite, brimstone, wormwood, ghost weed, velvet leaf, belladonna, bistort, and a couple of potions). Only the batwings are not real – anyone who would kill bats merely for a display deserves to be cut up and used in a potion!

Let's face it – not all of us have the Galleons (nor the inclination!) to travel from the Pacific Northwest to scorching, muggy Florida to attend an official Harry Potter Convention. So, we here in Portlandmeade did what we could to send the Great Franchise off in style. At the apothecary I call home, we were invited by a small candy company, Chalk-Let (cute) – which is run out of a mini-schoolbus: Knight Bus, move over for these girls! – to have a table there, at which we could sell goods and do live potions demos.

Ewww!!! Name your ingredient – gooey gel, spiders, rats, several species of snakes – Dollar Scholar hosts a freaky table

What could be better, I ask, than being a real live Potions Master and apprentice, getting to help kids make real potions, all while sipping delicious, homemade butterbeer and pumpkin juice and swapping ridiculous anecdotes on a balmy afternoon? Few things, I daresay. . .



Our potion-making table – for a mere five Galleons (oops, dollars!) kid and adult alike can "brew", bottle and take home a potion. Antiquated pewter scoops, my massive potion case, old parchments, a quill, and a jar of Unguens Levitamens complete this scene.



Detail of the parchments, et cetera. Three of them – Libido Dulcis Fervidus, Velvet Blanket Brew, and Venice Treacle, are recipes for real potions; the fourth is a joke parchment, featuring a student's hideously illegible scribble and the scathing red-inked reply of an irate Professor Snape.

Butterbeer Recipe:
Cream soda, then spray or slather some butterscotch-flavor whip cream on top. Mmm, decadent!



A young member of my own House, dressed in her finest, coolly watches her friend's attempt at making a potion. She sips some of that yummy pumpkin juice, and has already made her potion, with the assertion: "I don't care what the herbs do, I just want something cool to put on my shelf!" Slytherin vanity. . . Hufflepuff honesty!

Pumpkin Juice Ingredients:
Apple cider
Pumpkin puree
Ginger
Cinnamon
Cloves
(sorry, didn't get the fractions. A bloke like Sev, and his apprentice, can figure it out – tough luck if you can't!)



My real-life Master, Carmella, instructs a young hopeful on the magic properties of each ingredient – Rose, Lavender, Jasmine flowers, Cinnamon, Mugwort, Mandrake, Frankincense – while Mom watches. We taught our charges how to make three types of potion – for love, vivid dreams, and protection. Pop Quiz: Which combinations do you guess are good for each brew?


The Woman who was Snape uses freaky Legili-powers to divine the reading of a Love-o-meter, an uber-cool, geeky science glass piece sold by the nearby Dollar Scholar fun shop. Around my neck are the very expensive Emerald Phial and a very cheap candy-powder plastic bottle, now filled with a healthy bee pollen snack. I found it's not practical to fully channel Snape (like I do in pictures), even in a Harry Potter setting, beyond making teases like, "And I'm not even grading them!" Why? Let's face it, folks. These are kids, and Snape is – no question – not a fun guy to be around.

Potterheads check out some local merchandise. Pah! Golden-Trio emulators! nice scarf



The interior of Chalk-Let Candy Company's candy bus! Second only to Honeydukes, with enough variety of goodies to satisfy even Dumbledore's tastes, the Bus features bulk lemon drops, runts, mints, wax sugar-drink bottles, gumdrops, crunchy clusters, lollipops, jelly beans (yes, they have boxes of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, and I ran into one hell of an icky taste twice!), and Snape shudders to think what else. If you're ever in Portland, give 'em a visit – any candy-filled school bus with a chalkboard inside reading, "You are special" is a great place.


Afterward, at 9:00 pm, we all packed up like maniacs, I stuck 40-odd lbs. on my back and raced home on the wheeled broomstick to prepare for the Last Premier – as (what else) all-inhibitions-barred Snape!

Ladies and gentlemen, make way for The Saint – or else.

The Night that went Perfectly

WE DON'T GET HUNG UP ON MORALS – WE DON'T WORRY 'BOUT BREAKIN' HEARTS – WE DON'T CARE, NOT AT ALL – SLYTHERINS JUST WANNA PAAARTY

Potions Master is one thing. But party master? Rarely do I get a good chance to arrange a group of friends for serious fun. But for Deathly Hallows #1, Portland Midnight premier, that's just what I did – from the calls, emails, texts, invites and reservations, to gathering the necessary... um... ingredients.

Lesson learned from last year: Get there at least one-and-a-half hours early. After meeting up for a bite of mac-n'-cheese and some beer at Rock Bottom Brewery, we got in the long, winding line to wait. I was prepped – my Slytherin student bag was bloated, like a snake that had swallowed something three times its girth (broke my zipper, but I fixed it!), with the makings of a full party: snack mixes, organic M&Ms, Bertie Botts' Beans, several home-bottled potions of soft-drink consistency. My hair was freshly greased, my cloak newly embroidered (by my own hands) with my latest promotional insignia, and we were all ready to rumble.

The announcer stood up, bellowing over the heads of the young crowd. They were going to search us! Oh, no!!! No outside food!!!! My bag still hung over my shoulder, bulging under my cape like a Victorian bustle, and I seriously considered just slyin' my way in. What would they do, frisk us? But while Snape-wear is ideal for a cold, blustery Portland evening, it was horrid in that well-heated cinema. If they were gonna search our bags anyway... to heck with it! I whipped off my cloak. We plopped right down on the floor, still in line, and busted out the grub, laughing fit to bust at all the crap stowed in my bag.

Sometimes, the most Slytherin thing to do is ask, albeit in a silky, openly innocent way. No way were they confiscating my stash. Not wanting to be searched and hold up the line, this I did, displaying the bag's contents, whereupon the ticket girl said my "Harry Potter party props" were fine – it was just big fast-food bags and other blatant stuff they had issues with. Yesss!!! However, just in case of a search, I slithered into the bathroom – and stuffed a pocketknife and some fireworks (in case my friends were up for a spark-filled, Potter-esque duel) into my sock. Oops. It's always fun swaggering into Ladies with fake frown lines and a five-o'-clock shadow, or better, a beard. I'm the only woman I know who regularly dons makeup to cause herself to look older.

Bring it on!!!! We scored prime seats toward the back and nestled in. There came the usual parade of silly, cheesy previews, and while I was only "channeling" Sev at one-quarter throttle, I still delivered for each several scathing, flesh cutting comments, letting everyone in hearing range know I was one of those seasoned folks who see through Hollywood's hormone driven appeal to our common animal denominators of sex and survival lust, and was here only to indulge in something I liked before the screen interpreted it...

A quick, slick potions trick came next – I'd had the presence of mind to pack a two-part affair that lights up in a couple of tiny bottles ("Rapidalumos", or "Insta-Lite"?!). I have a "bling-chain" with another tiny bottle on it – a personal status symbol of a pimpin' Dr. Severus Snape. I mixed the potions in the pendant bottle for my friends' benefit, but it actually turned out very useful: my friend lost her cell phone under the seats! As Harry, Ron and Hermione passed the cursed Horcrux locket of Slytherin amongst them, I appropriately, and repeatedly passed my friend my own "magic chain", and she eventually found her Muggle device.

As the movie commenced to cheers, we once again got out the party fixings and tucked in with relish, probably to the chagrin of those next to us. Never let it be said that Party Master Snape is not good to his loyal subjects!

We were rather satisfied with the movie, which is saying something from the point of view of a die-hard book adherent like me who's frequently at odds with film interpretations. I won't give too much away, but... snippets: – The few scenes Jason Isaacs is in, he's damned fine! Bellatrix is more like I imagined her from the book in this movie, thank badness. There are many quiet spaces, with nothing said, equaling whole volumes of description. Quite a good deal of creepiness. And... I still like my wand, Nemesis, better. (Another item I hoped they wouldn't take issue with at the ticket stand...)

We hung out some more, and I finally got home, went to bed at 5:00am, one very fagged-out party animal of a Snape. Thank Merlin it's just a theory exam tomorrow...