Harry Potter Night and the Rise of the Death Eater

If you know me, you know I’m absolutely batty over Harry Potter. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve either read the books or watched the movies. Everyone has a guilty pleasure, and for this girl, HP and his wizarding world is mine.

Luckily, I’m not the only fanatic out there. I seem to meet Potterheads everywhere I go and I found two good ones at Travel Manitoba — Laurenda and Lindsay. Over the last year, we have discussed our love of the series, who our favourite characters are, debated what book/movie is the best, and, of course, what houses we would be sorted in (Hufflepuff for Linds, Gryffindor for me and Slytherin for Laurenda – she says Gryffindor, but I don’t believe it for a second!).

So one day we decided to kick our HP love into high gear and begin a series of Harry Potter Nights (HPN) — a night every month or so where we get together with food and drink and watch one of the movies and celebrate all things Potter. Yeah, I know you’re all jealous and want to get in on this action.

Cheers! Celebrating our first HPN with a Death Eater.

There will be at least seven HPNs to celebrate the full series. This last weekend was our first one and I have to say, we all BROUGHT IT!

We put out a Sirius spread.

• Lindsay raided Professor Sprout’s vegetable garden and mixed up some Mandrake Root Hummus to go with it. She also came with Liquified Chocolate Frogs, which were quickly renamed to Death Eaters once we took one sip of the powerful concoctions. (No Dark Marks were used in the sipping of this drink.)
• Laurenda charmed some boggarts into tiny little bacon-wrapped balls of heaven and whipped up a Whomping Willow of a drink. Riddikulus!
• I cobbled together a Diagon Alley Dip with Dragon Scales and brewed a lucky batch of Felix Felicis. Of course, you can’t have a movie night without noshing on some Honeydukes sweets like Cockroach Clusters, Flobberworms and Gnargles.

The night was a hit and we can’t wait for the next one. Even Stan put a little cape on and got in on the action.

Wild sweets from Honeydukes.

We put out a Sirius spread.

We can all use a little liquid luck (Felix Felicis).

The bogarts were frightfully good.

We should have known better than to mess with a Whomping Willow. — or two.

Lindsay’s fun compilation of the night. Potter, friends, drinks and food. Awesome.

Stan put on a little cape and became Crookshanks for the night. He enjoyed HPN too.

UPDATE: See how our other Potter parties went down here.