Atomic School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Every muggle can learn Harry Potter’s magic at Atomic Lollipop!

Atomic Lollipop is a combined convention, music festival, and art experience. What they failed to mention is that this year at APop it is also a sect of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! The lovely Maddy Savoie was proxy headmaster and ran all of the Harry Potter inspired events! Fortunately she was able to spare a few moments to talk to the Geek Chic Elite about the magic she created.

“I’ve been helping with Apop the past three years, but this is my first year running events.” She admitted, “I’ve been a fan of Harry Potter since the first books came out, I’ve been to every movie… I enjoy it because it is a special world that you can escape too.”

That escape is no longer purely found in J.K. Rowling’s text or the Warner Brothers movies, for Maddy brought the magic to life at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center. All of your typical classes were offered and provided extremely interactive workshops for con goers of all sorts to enjoy, not just for Harry Potter fans. Potions, one of the first classes, taught con goers about magical properties and used glitter vials to represent different ingredients. As students combined them they had to know or learn what properties mixed well together and what potion they were creating. The classes took place all weekend long and some into the wee hours of the morning, such as Divinations. In this class they took a look at reading tea leaves and tarot cards in an attempt to see into the unknown.

The following day classes continued amongst the rest of the Apop events, but even for those who are not Harry Potter fans, Care of Magical Creatures was a HUGE hit. Hands on Exotics brought in a Lemur, baby Kangaroo and an owl with a six foot wing span. With their trainers present you could possibly pet or hold these animals and without question drew a rather large crowd. While one of the trainers had Larry the Lemur out, the owl was resting on a perch in behind Maddy. While I was interviewing her it was amusing to see how many people would try and “sneak by” to pet him, all of whom had to be reminded – this owl has a six foot wing span and you look a lot like food. It was nice to see that aside from running a petting zoo that the organization was very quick to educate the people around. This was probably one of my favourite events although it only lasted a couple hours. Through out the afternoon and evening I heard a lot of people talking about either loving the animals or super sad that they missed them. Fortunately all weekend long the Hamilton Ball Pythons were available for those Slytherin at heart. They had bearded dragons, several snakes of varying size including a couple boa constrictors and a Black Pine Snake! Unfortunately Charms class was cancelled but the Charms professor Lukas Stark made his rounds wowing the crowds with his charms all the same – including showing up Gambit at cards!

Beyond the classes themselves there were also the O.W.L’s (Ordinary Wizarding Level) for true Harry Potter fans to text their knowledge and even a Triwizard tournament with three tasks, the last of which was held at closing ceremonies were prizes were awarded for various events. There was so much happening that even your average muggle could become a Harry Potter fan over the weekend. Thank you Headmaster Maddy for bringing the magic to life!

This post was written for publication on the GCE by Rogue Benjamin.