We Had A Blast Messing Around With Harry Potter Fans At The LeakyCon’s Three-Day Run In Downtown Dallas This Past Weekend.
It’s a good time to be a Harry Potter fan in Dallas!
Last week, the Henderson Avenue bar The Whippersnapper’s unveiled its temporary transformation into the Leaky Cauldron as part of a Harry Potter-themed pop-up promotion. Then, all last weekend long, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Downtown Dallas was similarly transformed into a home for all things Hogwarts-related by hosting LeakyCon ’19, the largest unofficial Harry Potter convention out there.
Those who attended LeakyCon really caught the Golden Snitch, too.
Across three days and several convention halls, the event offered fans ample opportunity to listen to several stars from the films and a number of behind-the-scenes players that helped make the movie adaptations of the popular book series shine.
Tom Felton, who played Harry’s schoolboy nemesis Draco Malfoy, was there, participating in a panel alongside Scarlett Byrne, Afshan Azad, Tiana Benjamin, Georgina Leonidas and others. In front of hundreds of Potter fans in the main hall, the former child stars spoke about their experiences while filming. They answered funny, nuanced and at times surprisingly detailed questions from fans as best they could, and also made themselves available for autographs and photos.
In between panel discussions such as “Government Oversight in Hogwarts” or “Moral Injury in the Wizarding World,” you could find attendees hanging out along with fellow members of their respective houses. Gryffindor had the largest room with the most comfortable lounge area — imagine that. In the main market hall, fans could catch a game of Quidditch or buy a new handmade wand (or shirt) from one of the many vendors. You could even get a Harry Potter-themed tattoo!
It was a great time, and it must be said: It’s borderline insane how friendly Harry Potter fans are. Conventions like this are known for people getting overly aggressive, whether it’s someone trying to get to the front row of a panel discussion or fighting to get that last cool piece of merch. That simply was not the case at LeakyCon, where attendees happily posed for the pictures seen in our above slideshow or indulged us in a quick on-camera quiz for the below video, in which we set out to see if they could recognize a magic spell from the Harry Potter universe upon hearing it spoken aloud.
LeakyCon is a travelling event — it hits Boston in October — but Dallas has been fortunate enough to host it twice in recent years. Here’s hoping it continues stopping our way.