In London, nearly 500 fans wrapped around several city blocks by 8 p.m., waiting to get into Waterstone’s, many eating pizza and chanting, “Good will prevail!” By 11:30, the mob had worked into a pandemonium of excitement, shouting, “Only half an hour to go!” and singing, “J.K., J.K., thank you!” The street outside the store was so clogged with revelers that cars and buses could only pass through one lane. It was a day when fans lined up for hours, dressed up as their favorite characters, and braced for all-night reading sessions of the final volume in the series that has chronicled the magical adventures of the boy wizard, his education at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and his epic battles against the evil Lord Voldemort. Throughout the day in New York and elsewhere, booksellers readied for their biggest party of the year by putting the finishing touches on cauldrons, replicas of series locales like Diagon Alley, and Potter-themed snacks and drinks like “golden snitch” balls and butterbeer. “I’m going to go and read one chapter and then go to sleep.” “I slept three hours in the last two days in the rain,” she said after emerging from the store with her copy. In London, where the book went on sale five hours before New Yorkers could get their hands on a copy, Tineke Dijkstra, a 15-year-old fan from the Netherlands, had waited in line outside the Waterstone’s in Piccadilly Circus for two days to ensure that she was one of the first ones to buy the book. After snagging their copy, her son Ted Yoo, 9, opened it to page 705. Pilyoung Yoo, 41, won a raffle for the first place in line. “Are we ready for Harry Potter?” yelled the manager. Downtown in SoHo at the McNally Robinson Bookstore, an adults-only group swilled “magic punch.” And at the Borders at Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle, fans who had been given numbered wristbands earlier in the day thronged around the front of the store at midnight. At the Barnes & Noble in Union Square in Manhattan, lines snaked around the block as police officers ordered fans off the street. Parties to herald the arrival proliferated around the city and across the country. The Harry Potter phenomenon reached its tumultuous climax this morning as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final installment in the hugely popular series by J. There has never been anything quite like it, and nobody knows whether there ever will be again.
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