I Went to LeakyCon2017!

Last week I went to Dublin to spend time with friends at my first LeakyCon (and first full convention!) and I had the best time! For anyone who doesn’t know, LeakyCon is a Harry Potter convention. Before the trip, I planned on doing only one post about it but honestly it would be just such a long huge post that I think I want to do about two or three. There were so many magical (just let me use this word a couple times in relation to Harry Potter please) things that happened and the panels were so amazing!

This is just going to be a quick overview of what I did whilst there and what happened at LeakyCon before my two more detailed posts in the next couple of weeks!

So! First things first, I think it’s really quite clear from the blog that both me and Sarah love Harry Potter. We have referenced it a few times in blog posts and we did posts on our Pottermore sorting’s a while back. If you didn’t know, I’m a huge Hufflepuff and I adore knowing people’s houses and how they relate to them and identify with them.

There were tons of really interesting panels and interviews at LeakyCon, some which I had to miss in favour of other ones but I chose well I think! I went to quite a lot of the lit panels with really wonderful authors, some I’m familiar with such as Juno Dawson, and others I wasn’t but now can’t wait to check out their work, like Moïra Fowley-Doyle. The best thing is that Catherine Johnson was there, who wrote today’s story in our read-along book, A Change is Gonna Come! I’m going to be uploading a whole post on the authors and lit panels next week sometime so keep an eye out for that.

The best thing about LeakyCon for me, and I know this is cheesy, was being there with both friends and strangers who love Harry Potter as much as I do. It was such a friendlyand fun atmosphere, everyone spoke to each other, it was super easy to get along with others because we all had at least one thing in common. Overanalysing books, films, TV shows etc., is one of my favourite things to do (I do have a degree in Film Studies so I suppose it’s quite clear from that!) and every day there were panels dedicated to a certain, specific aspect of the world, characters, films – you name it. I even helped my friend run a panel which, again, I’ll write in detail for a future post!

My personal highlights:

• The amazing panels/discussions about intricacies of Harry Potter
• Seeing the same authors for about 2 hours everyday because I just hung around the lit panels and had great chats at the signings
• The amazingly cute merch you could buy!!!
• The Wizard rock nights were genuinely really fun
• And OF COURSE my favourite bit was hanging out with amazing friends and making wonderful new friends too (Hufflepuff? Me? Nah…)

I’m also now completely obsessed with the game Bananagrams because we played it so much whilst there and I have ordered the game for myself because I can’t get enough of it!

My other posts will be up soon – I can’t wait to write up all the interesting things I did in detail!

Did you go to LeakyCon or have you been before? What other conventions have you loved? Let me know in the comments!