I’m still recovering from last weekend, when I was not only very busy but also more social than I’ve been in years. It was the weekend of this city’s big festival, the Queen City Mischief and Magic Festival, which started as a Harry Potter themed festival but they’re now calling it a general celebration of all fantasy fiction. Thousands of people descend on this small city and fill the downtown area. Apparently, hotels for miles around are sold out for the weekend, and people make their reservations for the next year the moment they become available. It’s pretty wild.

I’ve described it as an open-air ComicCon, but without the panels and with the downtown shops being the dealers’ room. Or it could be like a Renaissance festival, but fantasy-themed instead of historical and in a Victorian downtown setting instead of a festival ground, and with shops and restaurants instead of booths, with various activities and shows. Except it’s free to get in. Thousands of people roaming the town in costumes, shopping, eating, and seeing the sights. There were costumed characters roaming and doing meet-and-greets and photo ops. They set up some backdrop vignettes for taking photos. The characters made arrivals at the train station a few times a day. The Shakespeare theater did wand dueling choreography and dance classes, and there were Victorian-style dances being taught in the middle of one of the streets that was blocked off for the festival. I saw Morris dancers performing, Elizabethian dancers in costume dancing, and a bagpipe band. There were a few wildlife rescue shows, one with reptiles and one with owls and raptors. There were a few scavenger hunt-type activities. You could collect charms from the characters to go on dragon pins, beads to make friendship bracelets (found at various shops), or little dragon figures (at some shops or from police officers patrolling the streets). At one point, the carillon at one of the downtown churches was playing themes from various fantasy movies.

My job was running character meet-and-greet areas. On Saturday, I had Professor Sprout and Professor Trelawney, and a few others came and went. They had little areas set up that looked like their classrooms. People could talk to them and they had some kind of interactive activity, and they could get photos taken with them or of themselves in that setting. That one was on the side of downtown near the farmers’ market. Sunday I got to be on the main street, where they had a bunch of scenes set up in an old furniture store. The front display windows were big enough to be rooms, and in one they had the potions lab and in the other Professor McGonagall’s office. In the rest of the space they had common rooms from each of the houses set up, as well as some other settings for selfies. I mostly welcomed people in and managed crowd control, but I ended up also serving as an information booth. Sunday I was also Official Dog Petter. For some reason, all the dogs would drag their people over to me. I got lots of good puppy snuggles.

The people watching was amazing. It was mostly families, and most people were in some kind of costume. Some were really creative. A lot were related to Harry Potter, but there were also a lot of Disney princesses, dragons, and general fantasy-type stuff, like Renn Faire outfits with fairy wings. It was so fun watching the kids react to things.

I did manage to get away from my post briefly on Sunday to see one of the really cool things that was set up. There’s an old bank downtown that’s basically the perfect old bank, right out of a movie (in fact, they do film movies there). They turned it into Gringott’s bank from Harry Potter, but they didn’t have to do much to it. High school kids dressed up as goblins worked at the teller windows, and then down in the basement they had the old vault open, filled with treasure, and guarded by a dragon. There was a long line to get in, guarded by cadets from a nearby military academy. The woman working with me dragged me down there and got us in past the line, since we were wearing staff shirts and her daughter was one of the goblins. I’d been wanting to see the inside of that bank, anyway. They use it for special events like concerts and balls, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.

We didn’t get hit as hard by Helene as they did farther south, but we got a lot of rain on Friday and there was some flooding in the area. Saturday, it was nice and sunny, so we were fortunate. It started raining lightly late in the day on Sunday when the remnants of Helene came back. The lady at the gift shop across the street from where I was working ran over and gave me a plastic rain poncho, so I didn’t get too badly drenched when I walked home.

By Monday, my body was a bit mad at me, given that for two days in a row I’d walked a mile, walked around a bit more, was on my feet for three hours, mostly standing, then I walked a mile up a high hill. And then there was the introvert battery drain. I really enjoyed all the social interaction, but after years of mostly solitude, I was around thousands of people, interacted with hundreds of people, and had extensive chats with a few people. But it was enough fun that I’m definitely doing it again next year. I love seeing how the whole town comes together to put this on. There are all the shops and restaurants and community groups, plus all the volunteers, and then there are the property owners who let them use the empty spaces like the bank and the furniture store. Plus the church that puts on a feast in the church hall and plays music on the bells.

I should be recovered by this weekend, when there are more festivals, but I’m just going, not working. The main one is a farm day at the Virginia Tech Agricultural Extension farm near here with historic farm buildings. They’re going to be demonstrating an 18th century water-driven grist mill. I’ve been fascinated with water-driven mills since I was a little kid, but I haven’t seen one in active use in person. They’re making a whole festival of it, with hayrides to tour the farm and a nearby volunteer fire department selling barbecue. Then a nearby town is having a mushroom festival. I may do some touring in between, depending on what roads are passable by then. The weather was worse closer to the mountains east of me, so they had more damage.