Arts & Entertainment

Harry Potter Midnight Movie Fever at Century 16

Hundreds to fill the Mountain View movie theater to watch their favorite wizard and friends for the last time on the silver screen.

Like good Hogwarts' students, these Mountain View girls came prepared.

Not with wands, potions and books of spells. But with blankets, board games, food and every Harry Potter book and movie they owned.

"Yesterday, we had a Harry Potter marathon and started at noon and watched movies one through five," said Mountain View resident Maxine Sferra, 19. She and her friend, Anna Lee, debated whether the total came to 17 or 17.5 hours of movie watching. "We watched six this morning and are watching seven, Part 1, now."

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Sferra and her friends sat outside the movie theatre on Shoreline Boulevard, with a portable DVD player in tow, and patiently waited for the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the last Warner Brothers movie in the cultural phenomenon created by British author J.K. Rowling. They arrived at 1 p.m. and secured the first spot on their line—one of 15 for the sold-out screens.

To be sure, other moviegoers, like Laura Rossiter and her four friends from Palo Alto, did have wands, capes, the striped gold-and-burgundy sweaters, dressed like their favorite characters.

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"It's just fun to dress up. We have grown up with it," said the 17-year-old Rossiter. "These are costumes that we've had forever and we'd always play dress up."

Dressed up as Harry Potter, her friend, Margot Gerould, 18, added that the movie premiere also served another purpose.

"We are going off to college, so it's the last time we get to do something like this," she said.

The fact that this little wizard captivated the hearts and minds of so many people astonishes Trish Morgan, a Mountain View mother, who had the afternoon shift and waited on line. Her 19-year-old daughter would take the evening shift when she left work and relieve Morgan of duty. They expected at least 10 of their friends to join them for the 12:01 a.m. 3D screening in auditorium No. 10.

Morgan first read the second book in the series in 2000 after her cousin's 8-year-old daughter lent it to her one night. She read all night and then discovered the child had taken the book home with her. Morgan went and brought herself a copy the same day.

"It's a book that unites generations," she said. "My daughter loves it. I love it and that's really cool."


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