Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Launch Weekend – Part 3

TLC Report: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Launch Weekend

When we got back to the hotel we gave a play-by-play to our eager friends, then went out for dinner to celebrate the momentous day. I was so wracked with exhaustion I fell asleep right in my nachos, doddered back to the hotel and passed out for almost the rest of the night. The next morning we trudged up to the castle once more for the cub reporter conference, this time Emerson carrying my tremendous computer bag, which was stupid to bring along but we figured with down time we’d start on the transcript. Both dazed and completely out of sorts, our expressions made vague by the enormity of the trip, we stared straight ahead of us while the prefects played games with the cub reporters.

We sat silently throughout the press conference, ears perking up at good questions but really replaying the previous day’s interview in our heads instead.

As the conference let out, several people asked if we had a good weekend. There didn’t seem to be any sort of satisfactory answer to that question. We nodded, and smiled vaguely, and I personally wondered if there was any way to ever describe precisely how wonderful it had been, or how grateful we are to Jo for putting it together.

And just like stepping out through Platform 9 3/4, exiting the castle after the press conference was like a return to the Muggle world. The castle had been basically reserved for the Potter events, but now, as we left the last event of the weekend, the doors had reopened to general visitors. It was already packed with Muggles, of course.

We took a few moments to enjoy the view. We took some pictures. We took some video. We took our sweet time trekking back down the slope and back to our hotel. We had lunch with Lizo, who had been around all weekend but with whom it seemed impossible to meet up. We then took naps; it seemed, to me at least, that the end of the events had punctured me like a balloon: I had no control over the way in which I went limp.

And then it was time to get out of the whirlwind’s path; we woke, settled into work spaces, and started transcribing.

I’ll be saying this many, many times into the future; to my kids and to my grandkids; to my friends and relatives and co-workers, and a lot of other people I meet throughout my life who discover, by whatever circumstance, that I had this amazing experience: Jo Rowling is as cool as she seems, and as deserving as she can possibly be of all that has happened to her. Thanks everyone who has followed this journey with such interest and love; and thanks, of course, to that lady with the master plan, who owns the most evil laugh known to creation and one of the most valuable minds known to our time. Jo…thanks.