The Harry Potter premiere deserves its own post.

Last spring, when Matt and I originally chose to study abroad in London, the first thing we decided that we absolutely had to do was attend the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows .

Let me explain a few things first. I have been reading the Harry Potter books since I was 11 years old. When the final book was released, in the summer of 2007, I read the 700 page book in less than 12 hours. All of my friends at TCU are completely and totally obsessed with the series. In our freshmen year, two of my friends took it upon themselves to sort each of us into houses, like they do in the books. I'm a Ravenclaw, if you're curious. We were among the first to discover A Very Potter Musical, which became a Youtube hit. When we went out for sushi one night, we ended up having wizard duels in the parking lot with our chopsticks. In short...we really love Harry Potter. Which is why going to this premiere was such a big deal.

Unfortunately, I awoke this morning to a torrential downpour. My friends and I began texting back and forth, trying to decide if we wanted to brave the rain as well as the crowds. Finally, the rain stopped and we decided to go for it. We would meet at Leicester Square and hope for the best.

I arrived to find the place completely swarming with people. I'm pretty sure the entirety of London had gathered in Leicester Square. I found Matt and together we stood as close to the red carpet as we could...which wasn't very close. We made friends with some fellow Americans and began discussing Glee. 'Cause you know, what else is there to do when you're standing around waiting in the cold? We had a clear view of the red carpet, but after a while we still hadn't seen a single actor, although the frequent screams of delight we heard from the other side of the square indicated that there were definitely famous people present. The security guard standing near us was a very friendly man who was telling us about the other premieres that he'd worked at, most notably Transformers 2. After a while, we decided to move somewhere else. We found our friend, Devon, who was standing behind a random fence in a spot that, surprisingly, wasn't too crowded. Little did we know, Devon had struck gold. For we were standing about 30 feet behind a huge platform. And on that huge platform, the actors were giving interviews. And after they were done, they went down some stairs and went to sign autographs. AND as they went down those stairs and made their way to the first crowd of people, we were treated to a pretty decent view of them. Devon spotted the first celebrities, which she made known to us by screaming, "THE TWINS! IT'S THE TWINS! AAAAHHHH!!!!!" Yep. The boys who play Fred and George Weasley were right there. We let out a cheer and everyone pulled out their cameras. Except for me, because mine had died, much to my dismay. We continued standing at our wonderful little place by the fence for a while. Enough time to see the actors who play Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Cho Chang, Professor Flitwick, Fleur and who we think was Dumbledore. After all of that, we determined that we had seen more than we ever expected to, and decided to go ahead and leave. We were perfectly satisfied.

I knew I chose London for a reason.