One of the ongoing jobs at A&R was presenting the new books that had just been launched by various authors. Most writers got a slot on our “New Releases” shelves, or even a display in the shop window. Most new releases shared a sort of square pyramid table near the front of the store in the hope of attracting customers passing by. Next to this beautifully presented stack of books was a dented, stained table where A&R put all the pulp fiction trash they were hoping to sell off for a couple of dollars each. After I’d been with the store for more than a year, I was able to witness a couple of writers go from promotional displays of “Hottest New Author!” to being exiled in the ignominy of the Bargain Table.
However, one book series was different. One series always managed to throw A&R into chaos whenever a new book was launched. You know which one I’m talking about.
Harry. Goddamn. Potter.
In late 2000 Perth bookstores went crazy. J K Rowling has just released Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and with the ongoing success of the movies every person capable of reading had been transformed into a Harry Potter fan. Debates raged in offices and schoolyard as to whether Snape was the villain or the hero, and every social media platform was offering quizzes on which Hogwarts House you would fit best with.
I was one of the few people who didn’t really get into the Potter mania sweeping the globe. This wasn’t out if any snide counter-cultural elitism, it was just that several years of constant Harry Potter sales in A&R had left me a bit blasé about the whole thing. There was no denying Rowling’s magical talent for storytelling, but in a book store where children could read Ronald Dahl, C S Lewis, Terry Pratchett or the Lemony Snickett series, I began to wish that people would ask for something other than the adventures of the boy wizard and his companions.
Obviously, the book chains did not share this view. Harry Potter was money in the bank, and they were not about to pass up the once a year goldmine that represented the newest book in the series. The rival bookstore down the street had been spruiking the latest book for weeks before it’s arrival, and promised a Harry Potter-themed party experience for shoppers. Even a local general goods chain who had previously only sold a handful of titles to middle-aged women had instead deposited a pallet of the latest Harry Potter title on the pavement in front of the Perth train station when launch day arrived, selling the books straight from the box to people exiting the train.
A&R had a stake in this too. The store was festooned with every Harry Potter themed decoration available, and a giant golden phoenix hung from the roof over the back counter where families would receive their long-awaited order. Several staff members had dressed for the occasion, eschewing the usual white office shirt and tie for a black robe and lighting scar applied with eyeliner pencil. The remains of the last promotion, the movie merchandise for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, sat forlornly behind the front counter, and it kind of irked me to see Lady Galadriel and Gandalf the Grey lying defeated beneath the pageantry of the Potter universe.
“Hey, are these Lord of the Rings posters being thrown out?” I called to the other staff members, who were shuffling nervously while watching the army of excited children in wizard robes clamoring for us to open the store.
“Uh, I think we’re going to throw them out,” answered one of the lifers, reaching up to scratch his head before remembering he was still holding a small plastic wand.
“Really?” I replied, picking up a crumpled Nazgûl and trying to straighten out the creases. “I’ll give them a good home.”
“Hey!” protested Lana from the opposite aisle, where she stopped putting up paper Hogwarts crests to glare at me. “You don’t get to call dibs on those!”
“I thought you were more a fan of those emo vampire books,” I replied sweetly.
“Why don’t you leave me the posters and start reading Harry Potter, it’s more your style anyway,” came the pointed reply.
The casuals at A&R were not universally Harry Potter fans. Denise loved the series and was always talking up the latest fan theories on the identity of the boy wizard’s parents, or the origins of Dumbledore. Anton had a little sister who was Potter-mad, and the tousle-haired music student had more resigned himself to being a fan than actually wanting to be one. Elaine was thought the whole thing was adorable, and was usually the first to skip down to the children’s section with a gaggle of kids and talk animatedly about who everyone’s favorite character was. Dan and I were a bit over the whole thing, but knew that a job was a job.
As for Lana? The diminutive arts student had already described (often in distressing detail) the events of the latest book in Anne Rice’s vampire series, and was probably as far as you could get from the target audience for Harry Potter’s G-rated adventures. That said, I’m sure a crossover fan fic between the vampire Lestat and the inhabitants of Hogwarts exists somewhere on the internet, and if it does, Lana probably wrote it.
“Well, we can sort this out later,” I conceded, squaring my shoulders and gritting my teeth as the glass doors at the front of the store began to move. “It’s starting.”
Almost twenty years later, I still remember the excited shrieks that went up from the horde of tweens that stampeded through the front of the store. Harry Potter’s army was wearing every type of Hogwarts costume imaginable they rushed en masse to the back of the A&R store to pick up their orders. Within a few minutes A&R was at a standstill, the chattering, yelling fans completely gridlocked from the back of the store to the mob still waiting outside.
Denise had drawn the short straw and was already waiting at the back counter for the Potter-themed onslaught, but there was surprisingly little for the rest of us to do. Everyone in the store only wanted one thing.
Well, almost everyone. A portly, well-dressed older man with a grey stubbly beard edged his way calmly through the crowd and finally caught the attention of Anton, who was wearing a long brown robe and working behind the front counter. After a few minutes of conversation, the music student beckoned Lana and I over.
“Uh, this gentleman has ordered in the collector’s edition of the Lord of the Rings,” Anton said worriedly. “Perhaps one of you could go and fetch it?”
“Isn’t it behind the counter?” I asked.
Anton shook his tousled hair sadly.
“No,” he replied. “It’s with the special orders – at the back counter.”
Anton, Lana and I looked fearfully down the aisle at the cohort of screaming witches and wizards.
“Well, this is going to suck,” I sighed.
“I could do it,” said Lana challengingly. “I’ll bet you the Lord of the Rings posters on it.”
“You won’t be able to do this alone,” said Anton, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “We’ll need a team to go to the back counter, one able to travel all the way there and back again.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said to Lana. “You’ll need the help.”
“I will guide you,” came a voice from further up the counter, and Katherine stepped forward, still holding the long cardboard tube that had been used to store the banners festooned across the store. “I need to throw this tube in the recycling anyway.”
“You can count us me, too,” came a voice from the crowd, and we looked up to see Dan and Elaine push their way to the relative safety of the counter. “You’ll have to send us home in a sack to stop us!”
“Why are you so enthusiastic?” asked Lana curiously.
“I dunno,” admitted Dan with a shrug. “I was just kinda caught up in the moment.”
Anton nodded sagely.
“Yes,” he replied. “This team will do. I will send you out – to the very end of the book store.”
And so it was that the A&R team ventured forth, the special order receipt still grasped in Lana’s hand as Katherine clutched her long cardboard tube and led us into the unknown. We were in trouble immediately, as the hordes of black-clad figures haunted us at every turn.
“Oh my god I love Snape!”
“Do you think they’re going to bring back Buckbeak?”
“I heard a rumor that Voldemort is actually Harry’s father!”
“Is there going to be enough copies? I’ve waited months for mine!”
We’d barely gotten a few meters in before Dan shook his head.
“This is too much!” he yelled over the teen frenzy. “We have to turn back!”
“No,” replied Katherine, shaking her head. “We must risk a more dangerous road.”
“What do you mean?” I shouted.
“We must venture through the lower level of the bookstore.”
Defeated by the sheer press of Harry Potter fans, the group turned to a new path, descending the wide stairs at the front of the store into the basement level. Here, the space was not as packed with customers, but there was a dark tension in the air as the store’s usual patrons had been banished to the bottom-most spaces.
“Be on your guard,” said Katherine quietly, stopping to lean on her long tube of cardboard. “I don’t know what type of customers we might expect in here today.”
“I can handle it,” I whispered, peering at the shadowy figures shuffling nervously between the aisles. “Of course, this might all be too much for you, Lana. Perhaps you should just give up.”
“Over my dead body,” replied the short arts student sweetly.
“Quiet, both of you!” whispered Katherine frantically. “You’ve caught the attention of a group of kids!”
No sooner had he spoke then I spotted a gaggle of over-excited children, rubbing the tears from their eyes as they pulled at the shirt of their parent and pointed at us.
“Oh God,” muttered Dan. “They’ve brought a cave troll.”
Lana and I tried not to yelp as a giant, obese man covered in tattoos turned on the group of staff members and raised an accusatory finger.
“Oi you!” he growled. “My kids have been waiting weeks to get their ‘arry Potter books and now we can’t get anywhere near the right counter! What are you gonna do about it? Huh?”
“Perhaps I can help you, mate,” answered Dan brightly, stepping forward and holding out his hands. The customer towered over the younger man, but the difference in Dan’s physique was plain to see.
“Well, I need to get the book, see?” continued the larger figure, his voice now tinged with uncertainty.
“Unfortunately sir, you are going to have to wait in line with the other customers,” replied Dan neutrally, waving behind his back for the rest of us to get away. “No if you like, I can lead you back up to the main floor…”
The rest of the group crept slowly past the angry blob of a man and pushed forward, looking cautiously over our shoulders as we headed for the stairs at the far end of the lower ground floor.
“That was brave,” said Elaine, shaking her head sadly.
“He will be remembered,” nodded Katherine, scanning the aisles and grasping her long roll of cardboard tightly. “But right now we need to focus on what lies ahead.”
No sooner had we passed by the lower ground counter, when we heard a new and dreadful sound emerge from between the stacks of cut-price specials.
“Oh, you look like you work here. Can you help me choosing a book on finance? Of course when I was young it was much simpler we didn’t have all the strange gizmos that you young people do. No, we had to make do with pencils and paper, didn’t we? When I was a little girl, we had a proper slate to work on in our schoolrooms…”
“What is it?” whispered Lana in horror as the old woman shuffled slowly but deliberately out of the bookshelves and bore down on us.
Katherine sighed deeply as she regarded the wrinkled pensioner.
“It is a demon of the ancient world,” she replied. “And a foe greater than any of you. Quickly, get to special orders counter!”
“Oh, I remember we had some respectable books when I was younger,” the old woman continued, apparently unaware if anyone was listening or not. “None of this sex and violence you get in book these days. Why just the other day-”
“Perhaps I can help you,” cut in Katherine, leading the pensioner over to the lower ground counter and leaning the long cardboard roll up against a wall. As she did so, our manager turned back to us one last time, mouthing the words.
“Fly, you fools!”
Rattled, shaken and depressed, the remains of our party finally climbed the stairs at the far end of the lower ground floor and came up next to the special orders counter. Walking up and out into the crowd of screaming teenage Potter fans was like stumbling into a rock concert, and the black-robed witches and wizards still packed the area from wall to wall. Yet standing in the center of all this chaos stood Denise, her crisp white uniform dazzling against the blacks and browns of the costumed magical students, the young woman still smiling serenely and handing out copies of the latest novel in exchange for the special order receipts.
“Finally,” muttered Lana, pushing her way forward through the final rows of rowdy children.
“You know, I still think I should be the one to carry this for you,” I said, wheedling. “These posters are probably too big for you to handle anyway. Why not just let me take the receipt?”
“Not a chance,” glared Lana, passing the scrap of paper to Denise.
“Wow, great to see something different today,” said Denise brightly, rifling through the piles of books behind the special orders counter and coming up with a beautifully-decorated box with a golden ring on the side.
“Now, if you hug the walls, you should be able to get back to the front counter,” said the tawny-haired casual staff member, passing Lana the Lord of the Rings box. “Just go with the flow of families who have already collected their books.”
This was easier said than done. Even though there was a small line of ridiculously happy children making their way back to the front of the store, they were definitely swimming against the tide. Nonetheless, Lana, Elaine and I edged our way past the seething mob of Potter fans as Lana and I continued to argue about who should hold the Lord of the Rings box.
“You’re obviously too small to bear this burden,” I snapped, avoiding the elbows of the milling Harry Potter fans. “Just hand it over.”
“I know I can’t trust you,” pointed out Lana, ducking and weaving as she tried to hold the unwieldy box close to her chest. “You just want to hand this back and get those posters for yourself.”
“You know I’m a bigger Lord of the Rings fan than you! You haven’t even read The Silmarillion!”
“Stop arguing!” shouted Elaine over the top of us. “Can’t you see that they’ve caught up to us?”
Lana and I stopped glaring at each other and we looked up to see that a sizeable portion of the Harry Potter fans had noticed that we were staff members and started yelling and tugging our clothes.
“How much longer are we going to wait?”
“I’ve been waiting since four o’clock this morning!”
“Are you a Ron fan or a Draco fan?”
“We should have worn one of the Hogwarts robes as a disguise,” observed Lana.
“I’d rather die with honor,” I replied, readying myself for the crush.
However it was Elaine who stepped forward, the beautiful young woman putting herself in front of the seething crowd and flashing them a beaming smile.
“I’d be happy to help with all of your questions, but first-” she said archly, “I want to see which young witch or wizard can give me their best Wingardium Leviosa. Who wants to try?”
As a chorus of happy incantations rolled out of the crowd, Elaine turned to us and nodded.
“Go!” she yelled. “Trust me – it’s better this way!”
Lana stretched out her hand towards Elaine but the swarm of young wizards closed around her, and a moment later all we could see was the top of her wavy hair, bobbing as she tried to keep up a dozen different conversations at once.
The young arts student and I struggled our way back along the bookshelves, shaking our heads politely at the Harry Potter fans who tried to catch our eye while we continued to bicker over the special order.
“Lana, I don’t see why you’re being so stubborn about this!”
“Because you’re not the only one who likes Lord of the Rings! Besides, the visual design of those posters is stunning.”
“I don’t even see how you were given the special order to collect anyway! That receipt didn’t come to you except by happy chance! It could have been mine – it should be mine! Give it to me!”
“Absolutely not! I have just as much right to those posters as you do!”
With more than a few sharp words, Lana and I finally extricated ourselves from the press of teen wizards and witches to arrive back at the front desk, both of us still clutching the box adorned with a golden ring.
“Uh, thanks,” said the old man carefully, not quite sure what to make of the sight. “I’ll, uh, take that back now.”
“Oh God, are you two still fighting over those posters?” sighed Anton as he put the grey bearded man’s order through the till.
“Yes!” we both snapped in unison.
“Look, this is easy to sort out,” the tousle-haired music student replied as he rifled through the odds and ends behind the counter. “Chris, you take this half of the pile. Lana, you take this half. Easy, see?”
Lana and I stared suspiciously at each other but nodded reluctantly under Anton’s firm gaze.
At the end of the shift the Happy Potter fans had received their long-awaited book Lana and I clutched our Lord of the Rings posters as the wizards and witches began to file out of the store.
“So, uh, sorry, Lana,” I muttered a little sheepishly, looking down at a cardboard poster of Gandalf’s disapproving face. “Things got a bit crazy there.”
“Yeah, I, uh, don’t know what happened there either,” said Lana, looking fixedly at a shelf and trying to show her blush. “Must have been the Harry Potter madness.”
“You’re right,” I replied. “Wouldn’t happen again.”
“Absolutely. Just a one-off thing. Anyway,” she replied with a grin. “At least we got these cool posters, right?”
“What on earth do you think you’re doing with those?” screeched a voice behind us.
Stunned, Lana and I turned to see Kimberley bearing down on us, her face lined with the stress of Harry Potter launch day.
“I did not give you permission to take those posters out of the store,” the mousy A&R manager snapped. “Those are company property, and that’s stealing! You put those back!”
“B-but we were told-” I started.
“Not by me! Return them at once!”
Lana and I stared at each other in stunned silence. Behind Kimberley, Anton and Dan saw the looks on our faces and doubled over with laughter.
Red-faced, we went and put the posters back.
Leave a Reply