Magic was in the air at Horton Point Lighthouse on Saturday.
Witches and wizards of all ages flocked to “Harry Potter Day” at the lighthouse, put on by the Southold Historical Society.
“Our job at the historical society is to record and preserve culture, and that’s just what the Harry Potter series has become — its a piece of our culture. It’s a literary classic now,” said director Karen Lund Rooney.
Kids cast “spells,” mixed potions, tested their knowledge in a trivia challenge and got a chance to learn the secrets behind the making of the Harry Potter movies in a Q&A session with author Jody Revenson, who has written extensively on the Harry Potter franchise.
Revenson’s books include the Harry Potter “Vault” series: The Character Vault, The Creature Vault, Magical Places from the films: Hogwarts, Diagon Alley and Beyond and the newly released Harry Potter: The Artifact Vault.
“They send me transcripts, interviews, photos, any information [Warner Bros.] have about the movies, I’ve seen and got to write about,” Revenson said. “There’s always new information, there’s always a new way to present it.”
Revenson recently began working on a new series called IncrediBuilds, aimed towards younger readers.
“These new books just focus on one subject, for example we just did a Quidditch one,” she said, referring to the fictional sport in the Harry Potter world where witches and wizards fly on broomsticks and try to score goals, not unlike soccer in the non-magical “muggle” world. “You know, I got to go more in depth on Quidditch than I ever have before. How they made them fly, the sounds of the snitch, how they made the seats of the broomsticks comfortable.”
IncrediBuilds books also come with a small wooden model the reader can construct of something relevant to the subject — in the Quidditch book that something is the magic snitch, a small, golden ball with wings that, if caught, wins the game for the catcher’s team.
“There’s always more stuff to learn about this world,” Revenson said. “I’m starting work on Fantastic Beasts, but I can’t talk about that — silencio!”
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the latest movie in the Harry Potter world, will be released later this year. The spin-off will function as a prequel to the Harry Potter series, set in United States.
“My favorite part about working on these books was learning how creative and determined they were to create this world,” she said. “They would just say ‘make a fire-breathing dragon,’ to someone who has never made one before, and they’d figure out a way to make a fire-breathing dragon. They’d always find a way to succeed.”
Revenson was available for a book-signing after the Q&A. The event also featured a raffle of one of her books, the Harry Potter Character Vault.
Correction: The originally published version of this story misstated author Jody Revenson’s given name. SoutholdLOCAL regrets the error.
