The trash talk was starting.

"I challenge anyone to beat me," an online post taunted.

Washington University students are quite competitive when it comes to academics, Jessica Goldberg, a sophomore from New York, noted.

But the competition is in good fun this week because grades aren't the goal. Rather, undergraduates are using the next Harry Potter movie to show off their trivia knowledge, build spirit among dorm dwellers and celebrate something they've all grown up with.

"It's part of our pop culture," Goldberg, 19, said. "No matter where you're from, you know something about Harry Potter. Some people know a lot about Harry Potter. So it's kind of unifying, in a nerdy way."

More than 500 Washington University students snapped up $5 tickets to Thursday's midnight showing of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1." One entire theater at the Esquire is reserved for students, and other students will attend public showings.

The online trash talk referred to tonight's Potter trivia contest planned by Dilipan Sundaramoorthy, a freshman from Tennessee.

He knew he couldn't take the easy route with questions after students easily answered a query about naming 12 obscure shops in the fictional town of Hogsmeade.

Sundaramoorthy is a representative from one of the university's dorms, Liggett-Koenig College.

The residential colleges are competing in a new College Cup Tournament, a weeklong event that started Monday with a Potter quidditch game (played with dollar-store brooms as stand-ins for flying broomsticks) and live chess, in which student players wore headpieces.

A horcrux scavenger hunt followed on Tuesday and a party will precede the Thursday night movie.

Whichever residential college wins the most points for attendance, knowledge and spirit receives a trophy.

The Washington University students who planned the week are part of an organizational system that includes class councils and young officers with the Congress of the South 40, a programming body with a $500,000 budget to improve student life. The Potter events, however, are only expected to cost about $2,500, Goldberg said.

For those involved, it seemed well-spent.

"It's like bringing Harry Potter to life," said Tessa Makepeace, a freshman from Minnesota who is a college council vice president. Wearing a referee shirt Monday night, she told players how to play quidditch on a muggle field just off Forsyth Boulevard. Some players chased a human 'snitch" while others threw quaffles (volleyballs) at opponents.

Makepeace, like many of her classmates, started reading the Potter novels by J.K. Rowling when she was about 7.

The first book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," was published in the United States in 1998 and terms such as quidditch and muggle quickly became part of the lexicon, even for non-fans.

Two movies will be based on the final book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." The first one comes out Friday; and the Hogwarts Express is scheduled to make its last run in July.

For Goldberg, who while "daydreaming in accounting class" came up with the idea of a week of Potter activities, says the publication of the final book was more traumatic than the ending of the film series: "It was like, oh my gosh, is my childhood over? We were the generation who grew up with Harry Potter."

She wonders whether future readers will just download a new title to an e-book rather than dress up for street parties and attend events like those at Washington U. this week.

Although she knows youngsters are still picking up the Potter books, the midnight book parties and record-breaking sales that made a children's fantasy series front page news seem to be over:

"It's not going to be the same ridiculous phenomenon."