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SOUTH JORDAN — The owlery contained nearly a dozen backyard chickens, with rolled up scrolls waiting to be delivered by the gate, while the butterbeer bubbled in the cauldron nearby.
One might mistake the local neighborhood party for the real wizarding world of Harry Potter, and that’s exactly what the party planners — a bunch of moms who want to create memories for their children — would like.
“It’s creative. It’s so fun to be taken into another world that J.K. Rowling created,” said Hailey Stephensen, a mother of three who dressed as Luna Lovegood for the festivities on Saturday. “It’s so magical.”
Stephensen is one of seven moms in a South Jordan neighborhood who got together five years ago to reward their children who finished reading Rowling’s first book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” with a party. She said it was “to get the kids excited about reading.”
Every year since, the party has gotten bigger and better, with more people attending and more fun to be had.
“We say it’s for our kids, but it’s mostly for us,” said Regan Judd, who takes weeks to transform her backyard into one that might be mistaken for a real Hogwarts. She said an entire shed on her property is dedicated to the world of wizarding — it’s filled with decorations and other materials that make each party more magical.
“Harry Potter’s world is imperfect, crooked and put together,” Judd said. “So it’s a fun and easy party to throw together.”
The ladies develop party themes based on a different one of Rowling’s books each year.
Nikki Baird, Judd’s mom who flies in from Texas every year for the Harry Potter-themed party, remembers her own children fighting over the one copy she’d buy them to share.
“They wouldn’t put it down until they were finished,” she said, which wasn’t such a bad thing in her mind.
“The character of the characters are so honorable,” Baird said, adding that Potter and his friends display such noble values of honesty, loyalty, friendship and courage, that “if any one of my kids turned out to be like Harry, Hermione, Ron or Neville, I’d be thrilled to death.”
Baird’s enthusiasm helped to instill a love of the books, and frankly, of reading in her kids, all of whom were at the party Saturday. Each came dressed creatively in costumes befitting their favorite characters from Rowling’s fifth book — “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
In addition to dozens of little and grown-up Harry Potters running around, there were lots of Lovegoods, a handful of Dolores Umbridges, gaggles of little Hermiones, a Sirius Black or two, a couple staggs and at least one Lord Voldemort.
“It’s a big deal,” Stephensen said. “It gets crazier every year.”
The group of women, some of whom have moved out of the area but still come back for this, have wondered what they’ll do after they make it through the series of seven books. But having younger children who have yet to fully experience the magic makes them believe they’ll likely do it all over again and again.
“Harry Potter is so, so good,” Stephensen said.
The books first came out more than two decades ago, but it’s apparent that at least in one small Utah neighborhood, the story of Harry Potter, including all his brushes with witchcraft and wizardry, is alive and well — inspiring young and old, for generations to come.
