There's not a lot in popular cultural life that's built for smart people anymore. Harry Potter really is.
The conference's big Sunday-night finish was a Masquerade Ball in the enormous Sheraton ballroom. The place was a madhouse. There was someone carrying an inflatable goat, dressed as Hog's Head barman Aberforth Dumbledore; a silvery mermaid was in a wheelchair; a woman who looked like Mr. Tumnus scampered around with hairy haunches and an overexposed upper body.
Alex Carpenter of the the Remus Lupins and Parselmouths duo Brittany Vahlberg and Kristina Horner were roughhousing just in front of the entrance to the ball.
Carpenter, 23, who graduated last year from UCLA with a degree in English, has 55 concert dates scheduled this summer. He describes wizard rock as "probably the coolest summer job you'll ever have."
I asked the puppyish Carpenter if the hordes of boys and girls hanging on him throughout the conference meant that wizard rock has helped him score some horntail. He grinned and said, "There is a very strong distinction between opportunity and what you do about it. Wizard rockers are known for being pretty good guys, and behaving well. Because we're dorks."
I had just turned to the Parselmouths, who were bouncing off the walls with adrenaline and being 19, when there was sudden, tremendous squealing. The lobby emptied as house elves and unicorns charged the dance floor.
"Draco and the Malfoys sing a version of this song," Vahlberg explained breathlessly. "We want to go in and sing their version over it." And that's how hundreds of people, many of them born in the late 1980s, began yelling over Nena's early MTV classic "99 Luftballons": "The ministry's on red alert/ The aurors all spring to fight/ Moody opens up his eye/ Focuses it on the sky/ As 99 Death Eaters go by."
"Oh my god, this is better than prom," gushed Vahlberg when she and Horner returned, giddy and sweating. She was dressed in a venomous green dress, Horner in floaty blue. They both had the look of recently sprouted teens, unaware of their own coltish beauty.
The women met in high school in Seattle and are now freshmen at Bellevue Community College there. They first started writing wizard rock songs as a goof in 2004. Since then, they've produced a CD and traveled east to play with other wizard bands. This summer, they'll tour the Northwest.
Though they've taken on the personae of Slytherin brats, the women said their favorite Potter characters are the outcasts -- Neville, Draco, Snape and Luna Lovegood. "We are complete dorks," said Horner, entering some bizarro universe in which she was trying to convince me of how uncool she is. In high school, they explained, they enrolled in an advanced computer class. "The boys in it looked at us and decided to treat us like we didn't know anything," said Horner. "But it turned out we knew a lot," said Vahlberg. "Yeah, we recorded and produced our own CD, so clearly we know a little bit about computers?" added Horner in pitch-perfect upspeak.
In an adjacent room, a quiet girl I'd noticed throughout the weekend was standing to the side. Shoshana Rudski, a 14-year-old from Allentown, Pa., had traveled here with her grandmother. Potter books, said Rudski, "are an escape. I just read a chapter and I feel better."
I asked whether she was sad about the impending conclusion. She smiled wryly. "Let's just say that when I found out that there was a release date for Book 7, I ran to the library and gathered all the books around me, and sort of held them, and cried. A friend came and joined me. And then my teacher found me. It's so sad. But I've decided that I might as well be happy about it now, because there will be so much time to be sad."
Someone asked Rudski for the time. "It's 3:42 in the U.K.," she said. I asked if she set her watch on U.K. time because of the books. She nodded ruefully. "It's been set that way for years."
Rudski then pulled a piece of paper from her Harry Potter messenger bag. It was of her friend Alina Marhefka, who had desperately wanted to come to Phoenix Rising but couldn't. Rudski was having her picture taken with the drawing, so that her friend could say she had been there.
I was getting slightly fahrklempt, so I went to grab a drink. On my way, I bumped into Harper Robertson, the junior architect. She was in a red cape, her mother done up like a cat. "In the true spirit of the conference, we look ridiculous," said Harper. They didn't. They looked great.
I reminded her that we'd met yesterday, and a gigantic smile spread across her face. "Oh, yesterday. Yesterday was the happiest day of my life." Robertson's presentation had gone well, the proprietors of several of her favorite Web sites had asked her if they could link to her page, and she'd met some of her fandom heroes. "I giggled myself to sleep," she said dreamily.
Back in the ballroom, I was beginning to agree with Brittany Vahlberg that this was way better than prom. In fact, people anxious to host lively wedding receptions might want to consider asking their guests to dress in wizard garb. Boys danced with girls, girls danced with girls, boys danced with boys, and doxies danced with dementors. Everyone looked pretty, and if not pretty, then pretty weird. Guys lost their shirts. People were grinding, making out, hugging. They line-danced. They drank. They did the time warp. (Oh, did they do the time warp...) A couple got engaged. I was pretty sure that the Potter fans did everything that was legal (and some things that weren't) on that dance floor. My only surprise was that Bianca Jagger did not enter on a horse. In fact, I had the Rolling Stones in my head. "The music's screaming, my feet are flying, everybody's laughing, and nobody's crying."
Well, for now, anyway. Give it two months.
About the writer
Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.
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