June 21, 2003
Yesterday afternoon around three, my cell phone rang. I was in the car with Holden, coming back from food shopping, and I just didn’t feel like answering it and having a whole conversation while Holden was driving us down the Schuylkill. Plus, the caller ID said it was Scott, and while I love Scott dearly, some days his manic cheeriness is a little hard to take, even for me. So I let the voicemail pick up.
Five minutes later, the phone beeped. Scott had left a message. Apparently a very long one. But I was drowsy and feeling like it was all I could do to sit slumped in the passenger seat and stare out the window. (You know, ‘cause my life is so tough.) So I didn’t check the message. I didn’t check it until Scott called three more times in the space of an hour and Holden finally got sick of hearing "Concerning Hobbits" blaring out of my phone and said maybe, just maybe, Scott had something important to tell me.
This was the message he had left:
Katie! It’s Scott.
In the background, I could hear his kids yelling and the dogs barking and all the general chaos of life in Scott’s house going on.
Kate, honey, you have got to call Mary Senneca at Barnes & Noble. You remember Mary, right. I know you met her at that reading you did for Joe. Anyway, she’s desperate. She really needs help with the Harry Potter release tonight. She needs someone who knows the books and can perform….No, honey, put your sister down….Anyway, she was just going to do games and stuff but then Barnes & Noble corporate said she had to do a big thing and one of her staff members said she’d do a magic show but then she went on vacation…Kendall, no…Ken….honey….no, really, put your sister down. You’re going to drop her… So I told Mary that you’d be PERFECT! You love these books and you love Penn & Teller and you’re teaching a class in witchcraft and it’s like a match made in Heaven!… Kendall, honey, I know you’re saving Chloe from the snakes, but you’re going to drop her… They can’t pay you but you’ll get a free copy of Book 5 and 30% off anything in the store…. Kendall! Put Chloe down!…. Kate, gotta go. Call Mary. I told her you’d be perfect and she needs you. Her number is 555-1212…. Kendall, no more snakes. The snakes are gone….
You do realize that Scott is the one who told the kids there were snakes in the first place, right?
Anyway, I swear that man gets me into the strangest things. But, hell, they were offering me a copy of Book 5 for free and 30% off everything in the store. It seemed like Mary needed a performer who could do something to fill the empty slot in the event schedule for the release party. At the very least, I could read the last chapter of Book 4 for twenty minutes and walk away with Book 5 and a bunch of discounted stuff. Sure, Scott did mention something about my love for Penn & Teller making me a good candidate for this job, but the man really couldn’t believe that liking magicians qualifies one to actually perform magic, right?
So, at 4:30, I called Mary:
Oh thank God for you, Kate! Scott said you’d come through! Wow, you are saving our asses tonight. Seriously. I don’t know how much Scott told you but I wasn’t planning on doing much for the release – it’s fucking crazy here with hundreds of people lining up and I didn’t need to be running shows on top of trying to keep order – but Corporate came down last week and said I had to have events and we planned a trivia contest and a costume contest and one of my staff members said she’d do a magic show. But she went on vacation and no one realized she was going to be gone tonight and now we’re stuck and thank God, Scott said you knew these books inside and out and that you like magic….
So apparently liking Penn & Teller does imply some magical ability on my part. Damn, I knew I should have taken those freaking magic lessons sooner! (Although, I just found out that P&T own the magic shop that I was thinking about taking my lessons at so you can bet that I’ll be taking them soon! You know, ‘cause I’m sure they make it a point to visit this rinky-dink magic shop in Philadelphia all the time and maybe they’ve even got the guy who runs it on the lookout for a beautiful, 30-something woman who proves to be a stellar student of magic so they can add her to their act.)
Anyway, I felt it was my duty to inform Mary of my lack of magical skills. "Um, Mary, I just want to make it very clear that I am not a magician. I like magic, but I can’t do magic."
But you are an actress, right?
"Yes. Yes, I am."
Good enough for me. We already reserved a copy of Book 5 for you and I hope Scott told you about the 30% discount. Be here at 7:30 and we’ll put our heads together and come up with something. The show is at 9. We just have to come up with half an hour of something.
"Um, okay."
Great! See you at 7:30.
It didn’t hit me until a half hour after I hung up from Mary: Apparently, they wanted me to do a show, not just read the last chapter of Book 4 to get everyone psyched. What’s more is that they seemed to think it would be a good idea if the show involved magic. And I wasn’t a magician. And Scott wasn’t going to be there. Usually, when he gets me into situations like this, he’s there to spearhead the operation and I just have to go with the flow. But this time, it was all me.
I started to panic. And the more I talked to Holden, the more I panicked.
"Mary knows I’m not a magician. I told her! She can’t expect me to do magic, right?"
"Kate, the books are about magic. What else could she want?"
"But I’m not a magician!"
"But you are an actress. And Scott said you like magic. She probably thinks you can fake it." (I’m still amazed at this idea that liking magic somehow gives you the ability to saw a woman in half. Or at least pretend to.)
"Fake it? If you could fake magic tricks, then everybody would be a magician. It would be easy. Everybody would be Penn and Teller."
"Well, maybe not everybody. I’m sure there are plenty of people who aren’t dorky enough to want to do magic. Even if it is easy."
"Hey! Are you saying I’m a dork?"
"Just go practice faking some magic, dork, er I mean, honey."
At one point, I even pulled my Penn and Teller books down from the bookshelf and searched through them for a trick I could master in twenty minutes. By that point it was 6 o’clock and I had an hour and a half before I had to report to Barnes & Noble and come up with a way to entertain a crowd of rabid Harry Potter fans, a way that preferably involved magic.
At 6:30, I started wondering if maybe they wanted me to perform Wiccan spells or something. After all, Hogwarts is a school for Witchcraft and Wizardry and while most people think of Harry’s magic as more along the lines of David Copperfield, maybe what sold Mary on me was Scott’s assertion that I teach a class in witchcraft.
At 6:35, I took to my bed.
At 6:50, I debated just not showing up.
At 7:00, I said to myself, Jesus Christ, what the hell are you afraid of, Kate? Your entire life is one big, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation and now you’re scared to do a fake magic show in front of a bunch of seven-year-olds? I don’t think I know who you are anymore.
At 7:05, I decided that at the very least, if it all went horribly wrong, I would have an amusing story to tell at parties. Besides, they might not actually want me to do a fake magic show.
At 7:10, I pulled on the witchiest outfit I could put together that didn’t involve my black corset, crinoline, and knee-high latex boots with six-inch heels. I mean, hey, it was children’s theater.
At 7:30, Holden dropped me off in front of Barnes & Noble and I went inside.
At 7:31: I came face to face with this:
Join us at 9:00 for Hermione’s Magic Show! Okay, so they were expecting me to do a magic show. And not only that, but they were expecting me to pretend to be a magician while also pretending to be HERMIONE!
And considering that I had only figured out how to pronounce her name while reading Book 4, that wasn’t a good sign. (I was always dead sure it was "Her-me-own" rather than "Her-my-oh-knee.")
I also would have felt a little better if they didn’t have a big sign in the front of the store announcing the magic show at 9. If I had been Mary and my magician had gone on vacation and I had to bring in an actress-who-is-more-of-a-stage-manager-than-an-actress to do fake magic, my game plan would have been to keep it all on the Q-T and hope no one showed up. Then again, maybe that’s why I’m not the event coordinator for a bookstore.
I checked in at the front desk and they sent me upstairs to the Event Space (Ah, the scene of the crime). Upstairs, I found Mary, one very enthusiastic Barnes & Noble employee (Beth), and four extremely disgruntled Barnes & Noble employees (Roy, Jack, Tim and Albert). Once I announced who I was, Mary jumped up and hugged me.
"Thank you, Kate. Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
Beth was bouncing up and down and looking like she couldn’t wait to get started. If she was so enthusiastic, why didn’t Mary have her do the fake magic show? My guess is that she didn’t meet the qualification of essentially stalking a well-known magician.
The four disgruntled men eyed me warily, like maybe I was going to whip out a 10-inch, rosewood-and-dragon-heartstring wand and shout Avada Kadavra!
Mary introduced me:
"This is Kate. She’s going to save our sorry asses!"
I thought it would be inappropriate to laugh incredulously. Besides the Disgruntled Quartet didn’t look like they could take any more bad news.
Mary went on: "Kate, I thought you could use some warm bodies for this event so I’ve recruited my staff to help you out. Use them however you want."
At this point, I figured reading the last chapter of Book 4 was definitely out as a viable option. Unless I could make them act it out. Yeah, ‘cause Albert looked like he was just dying to play Lord Voldemort. Although, I’m sure one of the Disgruntled Quartet would have jumped at the chance to play the late Cedric Diggory. And Beth was so eager I think I could have gotten her to act out the entire chapter herself.
But that’s not what Mary had in mind:
"So, Kate, you said you’re not a magician, but we’ve already billed this as a magic show."
Bit of a quandary, that, huh?
"So what I was thinking was that you could pretend to hypnotize these guys. You know, pull them out of the audience and act like you’re hypnotizing them and they could do some silly stuff."
Okay, you know, Scott never said I liked the Amazing Kreskin. Or even the Amazing Jonathan. Damn! I knew Holden and I shouldn’t have bailed on seeing his show in Vegas. Besides, I may not have my Magician’s Equity card but somehow, I’m pretty sure hypnotism doesn’t really qualify as magic.
But Mary was desperate and she was looking at me like if I said, "Gee, that’s not such a great idea" that she’d perform a little disappearing act of her own on me. So instead I said: "Great idea." The Disgruntled Quartet groaned in unison. Obviously they had been hoping that I would say "Gee, that’s not such a great idea." Beth clapped her hands and volunteered to do anything I wanted. At least someone was being a trooper.
"Okay, great! So what are you going to make them do?" Mary looked at me expectantly. The Disgruntled Quartet looked at me expectantly, too, but in a more negative fashion. Beth just smiled and bounced.
"Well, er, I was thinking that, maybe, we could pick things from the books." After all, wasn’t this act supposed to have something more to do with Harry Potter than just having a 32-year-old American woman from North Jersey with no magical ability pretending to be a 15-year-old British witch? (Which, incidentally, was going to be a feat of magic in and of itself.)
"Like what?"
One of the Disgruntled Quartet raised his hand: "Doesn’t someone get turned to stone or put to sleep or something? I’ll volunteer to do that." His comrades glared at him. I wasn’t surprised; I figured one of them would try to cut a deal.
"Sure. We could petrify someone like the basilisk did in Book 2."
"What else?"
"Well, there’s Hagrid’s three-headed dog, Fluffy."
"Wait, the three-headed dog’s called Fluffy?"
"Yeah."
"But isn’t it vicious?"
"That’s the joke."
"Oh."
"So none of you have read the books?" They all looked at me blankly. "Never mind. So, yeah, Fluffy. I could have someone think they’re Fluffy and act like a three headed dog."
"Oooh! Ooooh! I’ll do that!" Beth practically fell out of her seat and then demonstrated how she could bite Jack on the leg. Jack tried to pull away, but she already had the leg of his Dockers clamped in her teeth. He smacked her on the head until she let go.
"Great. What else?"
"Well, in Book 2, Ron gets the wrong end of a jinx and burps up slugs. Someone could think they’re burping up slugs."
"Oh! Oh! I can do that, too!"
"Beth, maybe we should have one of the guys do that."
"But Mary, I’d be so good at it."
"But you’re already Fluffy. So who’s it gonna be, fellas?"
Three of the Disgruntled Quartet looked at their shoes. The traitor hastened to remind everyone that he had agreed to be petrified.
"C’mon. Someone’s got to do it. You guys are event staff on this. It’s in the job description."
Suddenly, working at Barnes & Noble became more attractive. I mean, a place where pretending to burp up slugs is in your job description? Sign me up!
Jack caved. "Oh, all right, I’ll do the slugs."
"Excellent! What else, Kate?"
I wanted to say that I thought petrified people, a three-headed dog, and burping up slugs was enough, but I guess they wanted more.
"Well, in Book 4, Fred and George Weasley give Dudley Dursley a ‘Ton-tongue Toffee’ that makes his tongue grow really big and fat and he can’t talk. Someone could pretend they’re reciting the ABC’s after having a Ton-Tongue Toffee."
"Oooh! Ooooh! I can do that one! Eh, beh, ceh, deh"
"Beth, you can’t do everything! Who’s got this one, boys? Albert? C’mon, you know you want to."
"Fine." Albert looked like he wished he knew a few spells of his own. Perhaps one that would cause Mary to burp up a few slugs.
"Excellent! And you can use me for anything else that comes up during the course of the show, Kate. And at the end you can make us all dance or something. Don’t they go to a dance in one of the books?"
"The Yule Ball. So you have read the books?"
"Nope. Lucky guess. They’re in high school; I figured there had to be a dance of some sort."
"Um, Mary."
"Yes, Roy, what is it?" Mary rounded on Roy like she just knew that he was going to back out.
"Well, aren’t the kids going to get suspicious if she only hypnotizes adults?"
"Good point. Maybe we should have her hypnotize a kid."
"But I can’t really hypnotize anyone!" Apparently, actors who enjoy magic should hire lawyers to draw up contracts that state: An affection and/or admiration and/or lust for Penn and/or Teller does not legally qualify said party to perform magic, hypnotism, juggling, fire-eating, death-defying escapes or any other related sideshow activity.
"Yeah, but you can pretend to."
"But you’re missing the point that when I pretend with you lot, you’re all going to pretend right back. A kid isn’t going to be on board with this whole scheme."
"Isn’t this Hermeeown, Hormeeown, Hormone..."
"Hermione." And I thought I had trouble with the name.
"What?"
"It’s Hermione, Mary."
"Oh, yeah, right. How they hell am I supposed to remember that? What is it?"
"Her-my-oh-knee."
"Her."
"My"
"My"
"Oh"
"Oh"
"Knee"
"Knee. Hermeohnee. Hermiknee. Oh for fuck’s sake! Whatever. Isn’t this kid supposed to still be in school?"
"Yes." I didn’t mention that she’s also supposed to still be around five foot two and 15 as well.
"Well then you try to hypnotize the kid and if it doesn’t work, you say that you’re still learning and of course some things won’t work. It’ll be more believable.""
"That could work. I’ll come in and say that I’m practicing hypnotism because we’ll be studying it in or fifth year at Hogwarts and would they like to help me?"
"Exactly!"
"Alright."
"Alright then."
"Okay."
"So we’ll meet back here at ten to eight and do the show at nine."
And that was it. Mary made the “volunteers” run through a quick demonstration of what they would do when hypnotized, Beth hopped around and chirped excitedly while everyone took their turns (except when it was her turn; then she gnawed vigorously on Jack’s pant leg again), the Disgruntled Quartet glared at Mary and begrudgingly went through the motions, and I tried not to worry that in an hour I was going to have to do a fake hypnotism show with no rehearsal and a bunch of volunteers with no previous acting experience and no desire to be there (well, except for Beth).
I spent the hour in between walking around the bookstore picking up every book I have ever thought I wanted because I was getting 30% off everything in the store for this insanity and I was damn well going to use it. Mary (who, despite her obvious disdain for Harry Potter, is a doll) also took me into her office and loaded me up with advanced copies, then she set me free to wander the store again. The store was crawling with people there for the release and she had a million and one fires to put out.
Finally, at ten to eight, she came running up to me, wearing a pair of big, plastic Harry Potter glasses. She slapped a witch’s hat on my head and tied a maroon cape around my neck. Then she put on her own hat. "Okay, so doesn’t that red-headed kid in the books have like a thousand brothers and sisters?"
"You mean Ron Weasley?"
"Yeah. Doesn’t he have a sister?"
"Ginny."
"Ginny. Okay, so I’m going to be Ginny Weasley and I’ll introduce you. Because, well, Ginny and Hormone are friends, right?"
"Right."
"Oh, and I know this probably isn’t the time to ask, five minutes before you go on and all, but you can do a British accent, can’t you?"
"Yes." Again, I didn’t think it was the time to say, "Well, I can do one. But not well." So now I was doing a fake magic show with a fake accent. Terrific!
"Okay, give me a minute and then I’ll go on and introduce you."
I was hiding behind the bookshelves just outside of the event space and I peeped around the corner as Mary got ready to introduce me. Beth was sitting in the second row. Three of the Disgruntled Quartet were there, carefully dispersed throughout the audience. At least these people understood the concept of plants. But the traitor to the Quartet, the one who had volunteered to be petrified, was nowhere to be seen. There was a good number of kids in the audience, all of them dressed in some form of a Harry Potter costume, but there were also many adults, and some of them didn’t seem to be parents of kids. Great, if there were non-parent/guardian adults in the audience they were going to be expecting a REAL magic show, not some chick in a plastic cape doing fake hypnotism on obvious plants.
But it was too late to back out. Mary had already charged up to the front of the audience. For a second, I considered just taking off, running through the aisles of books, down the escalators, and out the door with the hat still on my head and the plastic cape flying out behind me, so that when Mary introduced me, there would be no one there. But I managed to swallow my fear and listen as she said in a vaguely Cockney accent:
"My friend ‘Ermione is a brilliant witch. She’s going into her fifth year at ‘Ogwarts and she can do loads of magic. Today, she’s practicing hypnotism, something they’re going to learn next year at school, and she needs your ‘elp. So ‘ere she is, ‘Ermione!"
Right before I went on, it occurred to me that it might be a good touch to actually have a school book with me, so I grabbed a book off the shelf in front of me – luckily it turned out to be a plain, hardback copy of Shakespeare criticism with a title so small nobody could read it from the audience. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had grabbed, say, The Kama Sutra. I took a deep breath and went on.
Hermione, apparently, is a little more upper class than the Weasleys since the accent that came out of my mouth was very Eliza Doolittle AFTER Henry Higgins got a hold of her.
"Hello! I’m so glad you’re all here. I see you’ve met my friend Ginny. Can you tell me who Ginny’s brother is?" Ah, the Elementary Teacher Certification I did eight years ago was paying off.
Almost every hand shot into the air, even the adult ones. I picked a kid in the front row. "Yes?"
"RON!"
"Right. My friend Ron is Ginny’s brother. But she has other brothers, doesn’t she? Who are they?"
Needless to say, I was bombarded with shouts of "FRED! GEORGE! CHARLIE! PERCY! BILL!"
"Well done! I’m sorry Harry and Ron couldn’t be here tonight, but both of them have nasty colds and Madam Pomfrey insisted on keeping them in the infirmary." Thank Christ, I’ve read these books ten times over. "Anyway, I’m getting ready to start my fifth year at Hogwarts and this term, Professor McGonagall told me that we’ll be studying hypnotism. Isn’t that fun? So I thought I could do with a bit of practice before term starts. Would you like to help me?"
"YES!" Gee, if I really had been able to do hypnotism, I wouldn’t have been at a loss for volunteers. Hmmm. Maybe I ought to learn how to be an actual hypnotist in time for Book 6’s release and then I can amass a slave army of Harry Potter fans who will do my bidding every time I say Alohomora! It’ll be better than the Imperius Curse.
Anyway, it was time to pull the plants out of the audience. I didn’t much feel like it because I knew the kids would be smart enough to realize that things weren’t kosher, but there was nothing else for it. I walked through the audience and pulled up Beth, Jack, and Albert. I tried to give reasons for picking them: I said Beth looked like Lavender Brown and Jack reminded me of Neville Longbottom and that I liked Albert’s pink shirt. Mary, er, Ginny Weasley, also pretended to fall out of her seat because she wanted to help me so much. Once I had the four of them on stage, I needed a kid. I picked the smallest girl I could find, figuring she might not give me a hard time when I couldn’t hypnotize her. She was adorable with long blond hair and a blue and white school jumper and her name was Elena.
I had them all sit down. And then it hit me: I couldn’t just dive in and start asking Beth to pretend to be Fluffy without doing something that would seem like I was hypnotizing them. You know, like swinging a watch in front of their faces and intoning, "You are getting very sleeeepy." But I didn’t have a watch. And for all my lovely cape and hat, I didn’t have a wand that I could just point it at them and yell Hypno! and say that I had put a spell on them. Besides, it was starting to dawn on me that hypnotism was maybe too much like the Imperius Curse and some of those kids in the audience were pretty savvy and might start asking whether Hermione had switched sides and become a Death Eater.
I needed a gimmick, though. See, this is what happens when you don’t rehearse. I bought some time by opening the Shakespeare criticism and pretending to search for the chapter I needed. When I got to "Richard III: Tudor Propaganda and Fairy Tale Villainy," I said, "Ah! Here it is. Now, my book, Hypnotism: A Beginner’s Guide says that you should all get very comfortable and relax. Are you comfortable and relaxed?"
My volunteers squirmed around in their seats and got comfortable. Even Elena.
"Now then. I am going to count backwards from ten and I want you to count with me. With each number, you will get sleepier and sleepier. When we reach one, you will be asleep and in my power."
I have to say, when it comes down to it, I’m damn good at improv.
We all counted backwards from ten, Elena included, and by the time we got to one, they were all sitting with their eyes closed, seemingly in a deep hypnotic trance. Even Elena. I wanted to find her parents and hug them.
I dove in. "Okay now, who can tell me the name of Hagrid’s three-headed dog?"
A little boy in the middle of the crowd shot his hand in the air. "Fluffy!"
"Right you are!"
"He’s a Cerberus."
"What?"
"Fluffy is a Cerberus." The kid couldn’t have been more than seven. I was so stunned I dropped my accent for a bit.
"Wow. You are smart! In Greek mythology, Cerberus was the three-headed dog that guarded the underworld. I’m going to have to tell Professor Dumbledore that he should snap you up for Hogwarts when you turn eleven."
The kid blushed and turned proudly to his mother. I’m sure she’ll appreciate him thinking he’ll be getting a letter from Hogwarts any day now.
"Right. So Hagrid’s dog Fluffy guarded the Sorcerer’s Stone when it was a Hogwarts. Wouldn’t it be a lark to have Beth here think she is Fluffy?"
"YES!"
"Okay, so Beth, can you hear me?"
"Yes. I can hear you." I have to say, Beth was remarkably good – she answered me in a zombie-like voice and kept character the whole time.
"Alright, Beth, when I count to three, you will think you are Fluffy, Hagrid’s three-headed dog. Ready? One. Two. Three."
Beth rocked. She flew out of her seat, snarling and growling, crawling around on all fours until she found Jack’s pant leg and started chewing on him again. She gave me great motivation to stop her – the kids were shrieking with laughter and Jack was in danger of having his leg bitten off.
"Oh dear. Oh dear. I guess the hypnotic trance is really strong. Okay, Beth. Heel!"
She did.
"Sit!"
She did.
"Stay!"
She did.
"Good dog. Now when I count to three, you will no longer think you are Fluffy; you will return to your seat and once again fall into the hypnotic trance. One. Two. Three."
Beth did as I told her and I turned my attention to "Ginny". But I didn’t have anything for Ginny to do so I asked the audience. "Does anyone have an idea from one of the adventures that I had with Harry and Ron? What shall we have Ginny do?"
"Make her think she’s a spider! Like Aragog from the Forbidden Forrest!"
Mary was just as terrific as Beth. I had her pretend to be a spider. ("Don’t tell Ron. He hates spiders!") She crept all over the audience and made the kids scream and laugh. Then she had a turn as a Basilisk. Then since the Traitor hadn’t shown up and half the kids were suggesting that I petrify the volunteers like I had petrified Neville (I tell ya, they didn’t miss a trick these kids), I made all of the volunteers think they were turned to stone. They all went totally stiff. Except for Elena, who was sitting there, peeping boldly at me, quite obviously not in a hypnotic trance. I had to “put her back under.” She laughed. But she did close her eyes. While the others were still petrified, the kids suggested that I knock Ginny out of her chair and when I touched Mary, she crashed to the ground, breaking her Harry Potter glasses in the process.
The boys, Albert and Jack, while not as enthusiastic in their desire to participate, were still grand. Jack can burp up slugs with the best of them and Albert was quite convincing in saying his ABCs with a Ton-Tongue Toffee in his mouth.
And then all I was left with was Elena. Little, sweet, thoroughly unhypnotized, not-in-on-the-scam Elena. And the audience really wanted me to make her think she was flying around the room on a broomstick. "Make her fly! Make her fly!"
Uh, yeah, no problem.
"Okay. We’ll try to make Elena think she’s flying on a broomstick. But this is going to be a tricky one. It’s very difficult and I’m only in my fifth year at Hogwarts so it might not work."
Nothing like setting them up for my imminent failure.
"I’m going to need your help everyone. I need you all to count to three with me."
Except if it’s making them a party to my imminent failure.
"Okay, Elena, when we count to three, you will think you are flying around the room on a broomstick. Ready everyone? All together now:"
"ONE. TWO. THREE!"
And wouldn’t you know it? Elena flew! The kids cheered. I was so freaking surprised I dropped my Shakespeare Criticism. She got out of her seat and galloped around the audience as if she was astride a Firebolt. Well, maybe not a Firebolt, but a Cleansweep 7 at least.
Never underestimate the power of suggestion, kids. This little girl went home thinking I hypnotized her. She’ll probably tell the story about how she was hypnotized at a Harry Potter party for the rest of her life. Hmmmm. So maybe in a way, I really can hypnotize people.
After I got Elena back in her seat, I finished off the hypnotic portion of my show by having the volunteers dance. Everyone did, except Albert. I guess Ton-Tongue Toffees are as far as he will go.
And then, just to make sure I was actually doing children’s theater, I pulled out The Message:
"You know, hypnotism is really grand, but now I’m going to teach you a kind of magic that’s even better. Imagination! You don’t need to be hypnotized to pretend you’re Fluffy or a spider or that you’ve eaten a Ton-Tongue Toffee. You can do that all yourself and have lots of fun! So why don’t we all try our imaginations and pretend we’re Fluffy?"
In a second, I had fifty kids and half the adults barking and growling and crawling around on the floor. The next minute, they were all reciting their ABCs with Ton Tongues hanging out of their mouths. Then they were burping up slugs. Finally, we capped it all off with a flight around the room on our broomsticks.
My God, it was almost more touchy feely educational than I could stand. You know, Penn & Teller did a kids’ show (Behind the Scenes) on PBS for a while. And yeah, they actually performed magic and taught kids about educational concepts like perspective, light, and sound; but, hey, I was following in their footsteps. At least a little.
Although, the best piece of magic was that half the kids actually believed that I was Hermione. After it was all over, they came up to me in droves:
"Hermione, can you tell Ron that I have a crush on him?" ("Absolutely. He’ll be very flattered.")
"Hermione, when you and Harry were in the Forbidden Forrest, were you scared?" ("Very much so!")
"Hermione, is Professor Snape really that mean?" ("Unfortunately, yes. But I think Professor Snape has had a very sad life." Hey, I had to help out Severus. He’s my boy.)
The best one was an eight-year old, rough-and-tumble boy that asked:
"Hermione, you know how you were talking about Lord Volde, er ‘he-who-must-not-be-named’?"
"Mmmhmmm."
"Well, do you know anyone who likes Lord Voldemort."
"I expect the Death Eaters do."
"Well, I do, too!"
"Oh my!" I mean, what was I supposed to say to this kid? I imagine he likes Lord Voldemort because he is exciting and different and powerful and he’s too young to understand the lure of the villain. Luckily his dad stepped in.
"Yeah, we’re working on that one," he said with a sheepish grin.
So it all went pretty well. By the end of it all, my accent was more Britain by way of Brooklyn than Hyde Park, but at least it sounded non-American. And there were points when I was doing patter about the books and tossing out questions to the audience when I felt like some kind of bizarre Harry Potter lounge act. And I did hit a rough patch during a discussion of Quidditch:
"What is the sport that we play at Hogwarts? Yes, the little girl with the purple sweater?"
"Quidditch!"
"Quite right. And what team does Harry play for? Alright, the boy on the end in the striped shirt?"
"Gryffindor!"
"Excellent. And what position does Harry play? Down in front?"
"Seeker!"
"Smashing! And who is the worst Quidditch team?" Now, the answer I was going for was Slytherin, but it occurred to me as I was asking the question that Slytherin wasn’t the worst team, they were just the team that everyone rooted against. "Er, I mean, who is the Quidditch team we don’t like?"
Now, I knew I shouldn’t have picked the kid that I did. He was dressed exactly like Harry and he looked too smart for his own good. But I picked him anyway. "Yes? Harry?"
"I know the answer you’re looking for is Slytherin, but technically, Hufflepuff has the worst record."
What I wanted to say was, "Watch it, kid. You’re cramping my style." What I actually said was, 'My goodness! You are very smart! Righto! Hufflepuff does have the worst record."
Hey, at least, I recovered. It didn’t kill the act. And I didn’t have to pull a Gilderoy Lockehart and use a Memory Charm on anyone.
And, you know, considering that I had only found out about doing this show five hours before, and then had only found out what the show was actually going to be an hour and a half before, had no real rehearsal to speak of, was working with a bunch of unwilling actors and a child who wasn’t a plant, and was doing fake magic while pretending to be a 15 year old English girl, and still my biggest problem was a kid correcting me on Hufflepuff’s Quidditch record, I’d say the evening was a smashing success.
And I got a free copy of Book 5. Of course, that meant I had to stay until midnight. Which meant that I ended up running the trivia contest for Mary (You gotta do it, Kate. I don’t know a goddamn thing about these books). And those kids were scary with the Harry Potter knowledge, too. The only question they didn’t get was “Who was arrested for smuggling illegal flying carpets into England?” (Anyone know the answer?)
And then I ended up helping queue people up just before midnight because Mary and Beth could not project worth a damn and I have a big mouth. Which lead to one of my favorite moments of the evening:
"Ninety-one?! Right here. Ninety-two? Ninety-two?! Where’s ninety-two? You’re ninety-two. Okay, right here"
"Excuse me, Miss."
"Yes. I preordered and prepaid for my Harry Potter, but I want to buy something else too. Should I bring it up with me when I go to get my copy of Harry or should I go up and pay for it now?
"Um, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask at the front desk."
"Really?"
"Really. See, I don’t actually work here."
7 Deadly Sins and Other, Less Fatal Diversions
Pride:
Envy:
Wrath:
Sloth:
Avarice:
Gluttony:
Lust:
Book:
Tune:
Oooh, something's got a hold of me now.
Task at Hand:
Quest for Publication:
Woo, am I a good actress, or what?.
Actual magicians. A magical skill would have my night a bit easier. If less eventful.
Thankfully, as the emcee of the Harry Potter trivia contest, I did not have to make the final decision on which House Team won. When they announced that Hufflepuff had won, you should have seen some of the losers. And what's worse is that many of them were adults.
Emails. Papers to grade. Stories to submit. I'm slacking on it all.
I expect Mary will think twice about offering me a store discount as payment again if she ever asks me to do another one of these things.
Books.
Ah, Penn. Now that I have had a taste of your world, I am compelled to stalk you more.
Book 5! Book 5!
Eddie Money, "Think I'm in Love"
It's a feeling, buring like a love on fire.
Hold me tight, babe.
Don't leave me by myself tonight.
'Cause I don't think I can make it through the night.
Grades are due.
Total Submissions: 51
Rejections: 26
Acceptances: 1
Withdrawals: 7