Harry Potter and the Midnight Opening

Hey, Wolfy here! These two gems below are accounts of Friday the 20th of June's Midnight opening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, in our town in Cheshire. Be aware Lear and I went to the same place at the same time and met the same people, but knowing Lear and I our stories will be completely different :)
Click here to go back to the Phoenix page
~Wolfy~
Now don't get me wrong, I was excited but it was pretty cold for a late June night when we stepped onto the high street and joined the queue that stretched 6 large shops. We jumped up and down with excitement and wished the crowd to move on a bit each time. By 11.45pm we had a number of people behind us and were with people we knew from school friends who managed to make the wait fly by as we talked excitedly of the plots and possibilities in the book. When a few people strode by with their copies we scowled jokingly and the police on duty seemed to appreciate our company on their Friday night shift. Indeed we were with the nicest bunch of people and the group of about 10 of us were the rowdiest in the queue of about 600! There was aloud cheer when Waterstones opened for business, although we were so far back we couldn't see much. For the hour called midnight we kept ourselves amused by laughing at the drunks getting taken away by the police and singing popular songs at the top of our voices. I think people got quite sick of us by the end but hey-ho that's the way life goes! While we were waiting some friends who were a head of us decided to read their copies in poses on benches right in front of the masses waiting for their copies! I have never laughed so much whilst queuing in my life!
Anyway, once we were near the store we resisted the urge so go and hug the windows, which had huge pictures of Hedwig flying with the book in her claws. Once in what we called 'the Curve' where the straight line of the queue curved round to go into the shop we were ecstatic! We poked fun at the people who made the security buzzer thing go off and everyone came out looking sheepish when they passed us. Oops! Anyway, once inside our choice song was 'Build Me Up Buttercup' as we grabbed our copies and ran outside!!! We were so hyped and by this time it was 1:30am and I was running of pure adrenaline, I knew I had a whole night of reading ahead of me! And we did read all night! I've now finished the book (Sunday the 22nd of June) and all I can say is I'm queuing for the 6th and 7th books and making damn sure I bring a deck chair!! Thank you and good night!!
~Lear~
The time was approaching 10.30pm and I was sat in Wolfy's living room along with three other friends (Wolfy was in the kitchen). I was all geared up for the iminent middnight opening and the chance to get my itching hands on a copy of the Order of the Phoenix, when suddenly mutiny in the ranks occured. To my horror, my firends who had been invited along were discussing cancelling the trip I had been planning for for at least two weeks due to them being too tired to walk to Waterstones to purchase a copy! After much deliberation I decidedm I still wanted to go and pusuaded Wolfy to come too. The other three went home shortly after, but luckily enough two other people that I am friendly with were also coming to the middnight opening and offered us a lift down. So with the time having just past 11.40pm, I excitedly scrambled into my coat, with the Albus Dumbledore sticker on the lapel and called Wolfy, now sporting a festive Hogwarts badge. We arrived outside waterstones at 11.50pm and to my horror the queue stretched back so that it was at least the length of a medium sized giant, though not so wide. We finally reached the back of this mamouth queue and almost instantly befriended the people in front of us. After swooping rumours, ideas, likes,and dislikes of the books, favourite characters, Harry Potter ringtones (Wolfy!) listenign to random ringtones on each others phones, having my dinner of chips and gravy brought to me, another friend Iof mine had wandered down the queue and decided to join us. It turned out that the two in front who we had befriended were in fact friends of the friend who had just joined us!(Small world ain't it?) The seven of us that were now a small bump in the queue developed until there were at least twelve of us. During these happenings, firends of ours were appearing with fresh, shinning, godlike, new copies of the Order of the Phoenix, so after hailing them over seizing the copies and furiously flicking through for instants and being told off by Wolfy and everyone else. Wolfy finally gave in to the Temptation and found a mini spoiler about the prefects. So yay! This was all before 12.30, when the singing started, we had several rounds of song before we started talking again. The police appeared shortly after, though not because of my singing. at 1.30pm we finally escaped the queue with our copies. Anthoney who we had been queuing with sat down upon a bench outside and began to read. I myself opened up my copy and read as I walked, many dented lamposts resulted from this but never mind! All in all it was great fun and we are already planning the next middnight opening trip, ah, what would we do without Potter?