Costume Ideas for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Book Release

Whether you're accompanying your children or an adult fan attending with your friends, Harry Potter book releases are more fun if you get into the spirit of the event and dress up a bit. Putting together a costume for yourself or your kids needn't be an ordeal, either; while some fans may go to extremes with their extravagant costumes and recreate characters straight from the movies or books, there are several easy costumes you can put together in a couple hours without spending too many of your hard-earned galleons.

Wands

First off, no wizard should be without a wand. While there are plenty of wooden ones on the market to choose from (such as those sold by Alivan's), fans can, of course, also make their own. In particular, if you're throwing a children's party to celebrate the release of Deathly Hallows, you should consider adding wand making to the evening's itinerary. A length of ½ or 3/8^th inch dowel, sawed into wand-sized pieces, provides the body of the wand; kids can decorate them with markers, and/or glue things like feathers and glitter to them. While the wands in the Harry Potter world are generally fairly simple, there's no reason why kids shouldn't make theirs as fancy as they like.

The Hogwart's Student

The easiest costume for children is likely a Hogwarts student. Make sure you allow them to pick their favorite house, and look up the house colors and emblem online at a site like this one. The Hogwarts uniform seems to consist of long pants, a white dress shirt, a sweater or sweater vest, and robes; however, students in the movies leave their robes and sometimes sweaters behind in fairer weather, so I see no reason for young fans to suffer the July heat in too many layers. All you really need for a summery student costume is a black or charcoal gray sweater vest, black pants and shoes, a white button-down shirt, and a tie in house colors (or just one house color in a pinch). An even lighter alternative is to replace the button-down shirt (and perhaps the tie) with a t-shirt in one of your house colors of choice.

There are many possible props for a Hogwart's student. Consider things like plastic "familiars"--owls, rats or toads are good choices--or brooms (more about those below).

The Quidditch Player

The wizarding world is obsessed with Quidditch! To dress up like a quidditch player, again, hit your local thrift shop�â'¬"this time, look for old graduation robes. If you want your quidditch robes to match a particular team from the Harry Potter world, make sure to look up their colors before you go shopping; otherwise, pick up whatever color robes you can and figure out which team the color could go with. Glue some rickrack or trim on the collar and cuffs of the robe in the team's secondary colors. Use iron-on letters, fabric paint, or sharpies to add the name of the team to the back of the robes. Check out one of the many Harry Potter fansites, or this Wikipedia entry, for the names and colors of Quidditch teams described in the books. If you feel like adding a local touch to your costume, make up a Quidditch team name for your hometown; chances are people will admire your creativity and appreciate the humor.

Brooms are good props for any wizard costume, but are a necessity for Quidditch players. Costume stores usually have relatively cheap witch's brooms which look quite similar to the brooms used in the Harry Potter movies, but it's also easy to make your own. Get some sort of pole to make up the handle--a good-sized stick is fine if it's clean enough and you're going for the rugged look, or you can get a length of dowel--and bind twigs to the bottom of it. If you have a gold or silver sharpie on hand, add a brand name to your broom: Nimbus or Firebolt for the professional quidditch players, or maybe a Cleansweep for a local amateur team.

A Golden Snitch isn't quite as essential for your Quidditch player costume, but it's a nice touch. Find some sort of small yellow, orange or gold ball--you might consider looking at cat toys, since they tend to be the right size and come in a variety of colors--and draw a set of wings on in black sharpie.

The Death Eater

I don't know that many kids would be too enthusiastic about attending the book release dressed as a villian, but I'm sure many teens or adults would agree that it's fun to play at being the bad guy once in a while.

The Death Eaters, as described in the book, wear black, hooded robes, which might be a little oppressive in the July heat, so try to find lightweight options. Many black robes sold with Halloween costumes are pretty lightweight, so check the recesses of your closet for the Death robe you wore eight years ago. Another option is to find a lightweight black hoodie and pair it with something like a graduation robe. Yet another option is to forgo the hood entirely and pair any sort of black robe or long coat-like garment with a black shirt (preferably something fancy) and black pants.

A mask is a necessity for any Death Eater costume. While the silver skull Death Eater masks in the movie would make an excellent accessory, any sort of half-face mask would be sufficient for a costume. White masks are probably the easiest to find, but they can always be spray-painted black or silver.

The Dark Mark is also a must-have for any Death Eater costume. At its simplest, the Dark Mark need only consist of a black line drawing of a skull with a snake slithering out of its mouth on the inner forearm. You can consult the back of your copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (American edition) for a visual aid, or do a Google search to find variations on the Dark Mark that fans have come up with. Be sure that you draw on the Dark Mark with something nice and black that you'll be able to get off the next day; you might want to experiment before hand to make sure it won't smudge much, too.

References:

Hogwarts House Colors: http://www.mugglenet.com/info/hogwarts/houses.shtml
Quidditch Teams: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_Irish_Quidditch_teams