Harry's magic spreads warmth

Harry Potter fans get it.

They understand the need to obsess with each other over what was left out of the latest movie. Even the compulsion to have discussions about servanthood in England and the service industry, based on events in the fifth “Harry Potter” book.

Judith Brodnicki, 51, of Omaha, found her outlet for everything Harry Potter on an Internet news aggregator site, www.hpana.com. The site's even divided so she can chat with women of a certain age who prefer to drool over Alan Rickman (Professor Snape) instead of Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter).

But Brodnicki took all that fantasy and passion and brought it out to do some good in the real world. At her suggestion, she and a group of friends on the website have created a quilt that was auctioned Friday for a charity in Mount Vernon, Wash.

It's technically not a Harry Potter quilt — Warner Bros. got wind of the project and put the kibosh on that. Instead, Brodnicki and friends call it a “myth and magic” quilt.

The group included women from Australia, Idaho, Kentucky, Washington, Michigan and elsewhere. The quilt consists of nine blocks, each 16 inches square, depicting various potions, a dragon, a unicorn, spider web and cauldron, and in each corner, a patch for the four houses in the Harry Potter series (Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor and Slytherin, if you're keeping track).

Although Brodnicki didn't make any of the squares, she pieced it together, then got a friend in Omaha to machine quilt it at a discount.

Then she sent the finished quilt to her Internet friend Karen King, who works at the Skagit Valley Hospital in Washington state, which is raising money for a mental health department renovation. The quilt was paired for the auction with a Christmas tree King decorated with ornaments she made with another website friend, as well as a giant stuffed dragon she made, and hardback copies of the Potter books in the original wrapping.

The auction is the end of a project that began more than five years ago — but far from the end of the friendship that has grown among the website friends.

And far from the last of Brodnicki's crafts.

She's also an avid knitter — a craft that gets mentioned often in the Harry Potter series. She wore a pair of “Dobby” socks (the house elf made Harry Potter red and green socks in the fourth book) to the fourth Potter movie.

Brodnicki even wrote a short letter to J.K. Rowling telling her how much she loved the books — and that all knitters love the books, getting a nice letter from the author in return.

Her interest in quilting and knitting goes back to her youth and her mother — and her background as a graphic artist — but how did she get interested in Harry Potter?

“I remember hearing about the books on NPR (National Public Radio) after the first movie came out,” she said.

A co-worker also was a big Harry Potter fan. Brodnicki actually started with the third book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”

“I laughed my head off,” she said. “It was clever, funny writing. I loved the plotting. I couldn't put it down.”