Lawyer quits job to run Potter mania at home

Mexican Asher Silva claims the new museum has been set up in such a way that when a visitor enters he or she will immediately feel “the energising power of magic.” By Victor Uson

A Harry Potter fan. That’s how Mexican Asher Silva likes to describe himself. Silva holds a Guinness World Record for owning the largest collection of Harry Potter memorabilia in the world.And now, at age 38, Silva has decided to quit his profession as a lawyer to run the Harry Potter museum that he created in his own home in Mexico City. The garden has been transformed into a small field to play the magical game of Quidditch. One of the walls has been painted to look like the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. A stairway leading to a private section of the home points the way to Azkaban Prison.According to Silva, the new museum has been set up in such a way that when a visitor enters he or she will immediately feel “the energising power of magic.” The saga written by British writer J K Rowling, whose first book was published in 1997, has become an obsession for Silva, to the extent that he is known among his friends as “Asher Potter.” Silva says he personally identifies with Albus Dumbledore, director of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Guinness in 2014 certified his collection at 3,097 objects. He has more now, surpassing 4,000 items of Harry Potter memorabilia.He told DPA that he currently spends 16 hours a day working to promote, expand and improve his museum with the intention of having “people come to this place and have a magical experience.” “When I started my collection, I never thought that I would stop buying clothes for myself, or going to the movies or to the theatre or on holiday because all of my earnings would go to buy objects connected to the (Harry Potter) saga.“I even quit my job as a lawyer,” he explained. Like the heroes in Rowling’s books, Silva is a firm believer in goodness, virtue, loyalty and friendship.He fell in love with the Harry Potter books when he saw that all those values were so strongly highlighted in her work. He is full of admiration for Rowling and says he would do anything to meet her. “I hope that I will be blessed to live long enough to be able to thank J K Rowling personally. If she were standing in front of me, I think the only thing that would come out of my mouth would be ‘thank you’,” he said. He has taken English lessons so as to be able to speak to her — just in case — but is not fluent enough yet to hold a conversation.Silva has spent the last 15 years building up his Harry Potter collection with objects linked to the fictional boy wizard. He became a fan by mere chance when a friend lent him the first book in the series: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. “I did not look for the book, I was not such a big reader. And in fact, when I saw the book’s cover, I thought I wouldn’t like it. “One night when I had nothing else to do I started to read it and I finished it in a single sitting. From then on I became obsessed with Harry Potter.”Silva has earned a reputation in international circles as a Harry Potter collector. He is so established now that he cannot accept any more friends on Facebook and has no time to answer the mountains of e-mails he receives from all over the world.Silva’s museum has become a meeting place for Mexican Harry Potter fans and impersonators.It’s not uncommon while at the museum to run into Harry Potter and his two inseparable friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. People especially like to dress up as those three characters.Other visitors show up wearing wizard robes and scarves like those used by pupils of the different Hogwarts’s houses. Many of them carry wands. Jorge Moreno, a Mexican who sells Harry Potter memorabilia via the Internet, has opened a shop — his first physical one — inside Silva’s museum. And another Harry Potter fan, Elena Hernandez, set up a branch of her cafeteria where patrons can find some of Harry Potter and his friends’ favourite beverages and potions. Butterbeer, which according to Harry himself in one of the books is the most delicious beverage he ever tasted, is very popular among visitors. Others enjoy trying the effects of a “love potion,” “dragon blood” or “polyjuice potion” (a magical potion in the story that allows those who drink it to take on the appearance of somebody else for a short time.) Harry Potter is the focus of Silva’s life and his museum is much more than just a place to show his collection. There are dear memories tied to it as well, such as a picture in which the film actors of Harry, Ron and Hermione are seen posing together and which was given to Silva as a gift.It is also a place for Silva to pay tribute to his recently deceased mother who shared his dream of opening a Harry Potter museum. — DPA