It's Real for Us: LeakyCon 2011

Obviously, I totally failed at BEDA, and even after it turned into BALA it kind of fell apart, between the craziness of being in Chicago and then coming home and getting sick. But here I am again with a super-long post for your enjoyment.

It's the first day of September, which means that a new school year has begun at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In honor of that I've finally gotten my many, many thoughts on LeakyCon 2011 together in a cohesive manner. For anyone unfamiliar with the event, it was a gigantic Harry Potter fan convention that took place in Orlando, Florida, in the middle of July. I first began counting down to LC'11 somewhere around 500 days before it started. I know. I'm a nerd. I like numbers. Moving on...

I'll start with a basic, basic sketch of the experience so I don't have to explain too much as I go along. The con was held at Universal's Royal Pacific resort, which is within walking distance of the Islands of Adventure Park, which contains the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My roommates included my sister Alicia (or Phish), my almost-sister Maddy, and my friend Jess from college. (We met at a nerd/wizard rock concert in October.) We flew from Columbus to Orlando on Tuesday, July 12th and spent that afternoon exploring the enormous hotel and conference center. The next morning we attended a special event called Lit Day, which featured panels, workshops, and other programs put on by authors, agents, editors, and others from the field of young adult literature. Lit Day's keynote speaker was none other than Arthur A. Levine, the man at Scholastic who fell in love with the Harry Potter books and decided to take a chance by publishing them in the U.S. Wednesday night we attended the opening ceremonies of LeakyCon itself, and then we pretty much danced our way over to the theme park for an event called Open at the Close. The Wizarding World, which normally closes at 10 PM, stayed open until 1 AM just for LeakyCon attendees. The next day was filled with all sorts of programs, which ranged from academic discussions to hands-on workshops to podcasts to original musicals to film screenings to meetups for various groups of people. Thursday evening we attended a special screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, six hours before the midnight release, and then we hurried back to the hotel for a six-band wizard rock concert. Friday meant more programming, including a dance workshop led by Alicia, our friend Emily, and me, and there was another wrock concert that night, this time with seven bands. For me, Saturday was mostly taken up by the two incredible keynote events I attended, and Saturday night was the Esther Earl Rocking Charity Ball. Sunday morning brought a delicious brunch and many tears at the closing ceremonies, and then a plane ride home.

I've titled this post “It's Real for Us” because of a relatively new song of the same name by Lauren Fairweather. On one level, the song refers to a conversation in the seventh HP book in which one character tries to convince his Muggle-born friend that Hogwarts really does exist, even though her jealous, unmagical sister wants her to believe otherwise. On another level, however, the song speaks to the fan community's collective feeling that it doesn't matter what outsiders think, because we love this world we've read about and continue to expand upon. I attended the first LeakyCon, which took place in 2009, and it was probably the most life-changing experience I've ever had, even a shade more powerful than the time I spent studying in Ecuador. I ought to see what other people think about this, but I'm going to postulate that nothing can ever quite compare to your first major Harry Potter con experience, the one that opens your eyes to exactly how vast and diverse and loving this community is.

Unfortunately, I experienced several minor disappointments at LeakyCon 2011. At one point I remember stating that it felt like the “con gods” were against us. On Wednesday afternoon I lost my phone. It just disappeared out of my pocket right before the keynote with Arthur A. Levine, and because I was trying to find it I didn't get a chance to meet Mr. Levine, something I had been really excited about. I did get my phone back eventually, but not until Saturday afternoon. At the Open at the Close event, no one told us that the Forbidden Journey, the ride inside Hogwarts castle, was going to close significantly earlier than the rest of the park. We were just getting in line for the ride at midnight when a Universal employee appeared and told us that they were going to run the ride one last time and we needed to come quickly, so we raced through the castle behind her, and when we reached the loading zone for the ride the employees there told us that they had shut it down for good ten minutes previously. The girl whom we'd followed through the castle mysteriously evaporated. I'll admit I cried quite a bit over that one. I was supposed to take part in an incredible flash mob during the LeakyMug podcast, but it had to be canceled because not enough people committed to taking part. On Thursday morning, Maddy bought her very first wand, a beautiful Lily Potter model from Whimsic Alley, and as we were walking down the Universal City Walk that evening after seeing the movie, she reached into her purse for something and managed to knock her wand out. I heard it hit the ground, and we started looking for it less than ten seconds later, but it was gone. We retraced our path four times to no avail. There were so many people there, and I think it's just as likely that it got kicked under one of the carts along the City Walk as it is that someone else took it. I gave her money to buy a new wand the next day, because I was just not going to let my little sister lose her wand at her first con, and she went back and bought the James Potter model. And unfortunately, I ended up hating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which was kind of the central event of the con. I won't go into all of that here, because that could be a whole post unto itself, but I sobbed during the credits because I wanted so much to like it, but I just didn't.

In all honesty, I was a little disappointed by parts of the actual con and some of its staff. Registration was a total and complete mess. If you can't handle 3,000 people's registration, then don't let 3,000 people register. There was no excuse for the literally hundreds of badges that were missing. I missed the two Lit Day programs I most wanted to attend because I had to stand in one of several conflict resolution lines for over two hours, and I know they kept telling Lit Day registrants to just go to our programs and take care of it later, but I was afraid if I got out of line and came back I would miss either the Arthur Levine keynote or the opening ceremonies or not have time to change into my costume for Open at the Close. Also, in addition to calling the hotel's lost-and-found every few hours, I asked about my phone every four hours or so at the Leaky staff desk in the conference center, and I unfortunately discovered rude Leaky staffers for the first time ever. Most times the people were very nice, but there were a few occasions where I was made to feel like I was wasting people's time because they had to turn their attention away from their conversations with friends to listen to my quick question.

However. However, however, however, even when things kind of sucked, I was still at LeakyCon. I got to walk through Hogsmeade sipping butterbeer and eat at the Three Broomsticks with my sisters and some of my closest friends (all of whom I've known for less than two years). I had my picture taken in front of Hogwarts with Alicia and my dear friends Emily and Jordan, just as we did when we were at King's Cross Station four years ago. I waltzed with my friend Philip and a good chunk of Team Starkid during “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at the ball. I got to talk to my friend Elisa, whom I met last year at Wrockstock, and I got the chance to have a real conversation with Jordan for the first time since we graduated college. I also met a few friends whom I'd never before met IRL. In fact, I met my friend Jodi when we randomly wound up sitting next to each other while waiting for the LeakyMug to start, and we talked for probably fifteen minutes before realizing we tweet each other all the time! 

The program Alicia, Emily, and I did, which was called “Dance Against the Dark Arts,” ran perfectly smoothly and we had two or three times as many participants as we were hoping for! I was sad that John Green had to go home because he got sick, but I did get to meet him at LC'09, and I got to see Hank run around the room with swords and sing “Protons and Neutrons” in the dark (because the lights went out randomly), and Maureen Johnson trolled the Nerdfighter gathering the whole time via Twitter. I laughed and cried and laughed during the amazing Very Starkid Event and high-fived Joe Walker during the photo booth session. I learned that Benedict Clarke (young Snape in the film) is afraid of lemon meringue pie, and I watched my sister stump Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) with a Harry Potter trivia question. I got to tell Stephanie Perkins how much I love her first novel, Anna and the French Kiss. And the wizard rock – oh my goodness, the wizard rock! Bands/artists that deserve special recognition for mind-blowing sets that I will never forget include Tonks and the Aurors, Ministry of Magic, Hank Green, Gred and Forge, Harry and the Potters (just for having Evanna come out and play bass during their encore) and of course, Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls and The Remus Lupins, who were playing their last shows. Seeing Alex Carpenter tear up stage was really evidence of how far this genre of music that began as a joke has come. Speaking of Alex, it was really wonderful to get a chance to talk to him in the Room of Requirement on Friday afternoon without being surrounded by a crowd of people also wanting to talk to him. When he's not swamped by a hundred people and can actually hold a conversation with you, you know that he is really glad to talk to you and is honestly interested in what you're saying.

And of course, there's the one thing that I can never manage to express adequately, no matter how hard I try, which is the sense of love and acceptance and community that you can practically grab out of the air when you're at an event like this. Harry Potter fans, the wonderful, nerdy, totally insane ones who spend their hard-earned money to go to LeakyCon, are the most amazing group of people with whom I've ever been associated. There's no way to replicate how I feel inside when I've got my arms around sweaty, hoarse-voiced people I don't even know and we're all swaying back and forth and singing “We're wizards, we'll party forever! This night will never end!” at the top of our lungs, or when Melissa Anelli announces that we've raised $120,000 for Book Aid International, the Harry Potter Alliance, and the This Star Won't Go Out Foundation. It's because of those feelings that I was literally sobbing by the fourth note of “Days of Summer” at the closing ceremonies.

As Lauren says in her beautiful song, “It's real for us, it's real for us. It doesn't matter what the Muggles say, 'cause it's real for us.” I am so blessed because I do get to live in Harry Potter's world, or at least as close as anyone except Jo Rowling can possibly come, and I know it's real because it has its ups and downs just like any other part of life. Even when things in the wizarding world are less than perfect, there's nowhere else I'd rather be.