CLOSEUP: Harry Potter fans descend on Chestnut Hill for Potter Festival

Posted 10/21/13

by Brian Rudnick

Harry Potter fans swarmed the attractions along Germantown Avenue on Saturday for the Chestnut Hill Harry Potter Festival. At Top of the Hill Market, Dan Lemoyne, a Harry …

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CLOSEUP: Harry Potter fans descend on Chestnut Hill for Potter Festival

Posted

by Brian Rudnick

Harry Potter fans swarmed the attractions along Germantown Avenue on Saturday for the Chestnut Hill Harry Potter Festival. At Top of the Hill Market, Dan Lemoyne, a Harry Potter/Daniel Radcliffe doppelganger, obligingly struck poses with adoring fans for photos. Meanwhile Professor Dumbledore employed his sorting hat to assign “students” into different Houses of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft. Lemoyne and friends Alyssa Alberto and Lisa Makhoul offered their responses to the question. “What role does fantasy play in your life?”

 

Cynthia Day and Therese Tiger gave out brownies to raise funds for “Autism Speaks” a project of their daughters at the Springside School. Research is aimed at determining what environmental factors may be triggering genetic predispositions to the sensory/social/developmental disorder. Why table at the Chestnut Hill Harry Potter Festival? The crowds. But Tiger’s husband George drew a parallel between his autistic nephew and Harry Potter, both teens facing the normal teen challenges and, in addition, possessing special powers.

 

Outside the Ministry of Magic (Chestnut Hill Visitor’s Center) a man was taking a photo of two young hooded women, one very colorfully attired, betwixt lifesize cardboard cutouts of Professor Dumbledore and Harry Potter. The women simply had happened to wander into the Harry Potter Festival wearing the garb of their homeland, Saudi Arabia. Instructional technology students at Chestnut Hill College, they were pleased to find themselves amid the festivities. “It’s fun,” said one who had read the first two books in the Potter series.

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