Frequently Asked Questions
For the curious, here’s a little bit more information about the Companion.
Who are you?
My name is John Kearns, and I’m just a big fan of Harry Potter. Rowling used to say that her biggest fans were “obsessives,” and that’s definitely me. I was an editor at the Harry Potter Lexicon for three years, until events I couldn’t control sucked the fun out of it for me and I decided to start my own project instead. I started working on this site in November 2007, and it first went live with five chapters posted in February 2009.
How do you know so much about Harry Potter?
I’ve actually only read the books cover-to-cover a handful of times; more of my knowledge comes from looking up references, having conversations about the books, and just having a knack for making connections. I also once indexed the entirety of the series (back when there were just five books), and I’ve done lots of things like write trivia contests and cross-check encyclopedias to ensure all the necessary entries are included.
How did you find all of the artists?
Lots and lots of searching. The first four months I worked on this project, all I did was collect art. My iPhoto library cracked 2,000 Harry Potter images long before anyone but me knew about the site, and all but a handful are canon-based (that is, scenes direct from the books). I’m up to 3,800 now, with permission to use work from over 100 different artists, and still climbing. Incidentally, every drawing on the site was reprinted with the exclusive permission of the artist who created it and cannot be reused without their permission.
How do you decide what artwork to include on the HPC?
I spent a long time debating how I would select art for the Companion. Ultimately, I decided that the only way I could create a site with a coherent vision – as well as one that I would truly enjoy working on – would be if the vision were exclusively my own. I don’t pretend to have credentials that qualify me to judge what artwork is ‘good;’ I simply take art that fits what I see when I read the books. This ends up meaning that only a very small percentage of the art I consider – under 10% is my best estimate – ends up on the site.
I realize that my method is entirely subjective. I also realize that some of the artists and pieces I’ve chosen not to include are wonderful (some of my personal favorites actually didn’t make the cut). So I hope nobody thinks I’m judging their work by not including it – I’m merely saying it doesn’t fit the feel of the site I’m trying to create.
What about the banner artwork?
The banner artwork changes along with the chapters I’m currently posting. To date I’ve used twenty-four different drawings by twenty-one different artists. If you’re curious to see any you might have missed, they are all archived here.
Are you still looking for more art?
Always – if you have some (or know of some), I’d love to see it! I can’t promise I’ll use everything that I’m sent, of course; as I say above, it has to fit my vision of the books (and depending on the scene, I may already have lots of other drawings!). But it can’t hurt to send me an e-mail, right?
While we’re at it, here are a few scenes I’m really desperate to find:
- “THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED,” in CS8
- Harry and Ron take Polyjuice and talk to Draco, in CS12
- Harry and Ron confront Lockhart about the Chamber and take him to the entrance, in CS16
- The D.A. meets in the Room of Requirement, in OP18
- Trelawney is publicly sacked, in OP26
- Dumbledore escapes the Ministry in dramatic fashion, in OP27
- Harry takes Felix Felicis and gets the memory from Slughorn, in HBP22
- Tottenham Court Road, in DH9
- Harry infiltrates the Ministry of Magic, in DH12-DH13
- Harry and Hermione visit Bathilda Bagshot’s house, in DH17
- Ollivander and Griphook talk with Harry at Shell Cottage, in DH24
- The D.A. greets the trio in the Room of Requirement, in DH29
If you find any of these, please send them to me!
Why don’t you update more often?
When I first started this site I had lots of spare time, and posted a new chapter every two or three days. I’ve since become a father and started an intense part-time job, staying home with my now-two-year-old on the days in between. So I just don’t have the opportunities I once did to sit at the computer. Also, my original project (the chapter-by-chapter pages) is now complete, and the pages I’m working on now take more time to build. So I can’t update super often any more, but updates still come in from time to time. I recommend following on an RSS feed, Twitter, or Facebook to get updates as they roll in (links are in the right-hand column), and I’ll keep doing my best. ;)
What is your policy on comments?
I read all comments myself and reserve the right to edit or delete any of them at my discretion. That said, I do this very, very infrequently – I would estimate I’ve edited maybe a couple dozen of the thousands that have been posted. If I do edit a comment, it’s for one of these reasons:
–Appropriateness. Anything that is more vulgar, sexual, etc. than the language in the Harry Potter books is off-limits.
–Respect. Anything flagrantly disrespectful to other users of the site (or to other people in general) is removed.
–Clarity. Occasionally someone will post the same idea multiple times, clearly by mistake, or make an error and correct it in a subsequent post, and I’ll edit these just to get the person’s idea across the way they intended it.
Again, this is very rare, and I owe a big thanks to my readers – generally as a group we are incredibly respectful and appropriate, and to date I’ve never had to ban anybody from the site. So I appreciate everyone who does their part to keep this up!
You quote a lot of direct text from the books. Won’t J.K. Rowling hate you?
I don’t believe so. In terms of copyright I’m not breaking any new ground, as my format was partially inspired by a number of predecessors, including Makani’s Project HBP; Marta T’s website, with her loads of canon art; The Harry Potter Lexicon’s Reader’s Guides, and Tealin Raintree’s Azkaban Project. All have been around for some time, and one has been endorsed by Rowling. My site is also freely available to anyone who wants to read it, which Rowling has said in the past is important to her.
That said, if I ever hear from Rowling or Warner Brothers that part of my site is unsatisfactory to them for any reason, I will of course make immediate adjustments. And I’m certainly not going to be publishing any of it.
How do I get in touch with you?
You can leave a comment on any page on the site (I read all of them) or e-mail me at john@hpcompanion.com.
Very cool site!
Karen said this on March 14, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Hello, i want to know if you could create a pdf or something to download of these beauty work for reading offline. i apreciate it a lot. Thanks.
alex cajan said this on August 13, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Hi Alex – thanks for you comment. The short answer to your question is… no, at least not right now. I might look into a way to do this down the road (I’d like to have the pages permanently saved anyway) but I just don’t have time to figure it out right now, I’m afraid. Does anybody else know an easy way to make this happen?
John Kearns said this on August 13, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Hi. Really enjoy your website and look forward to the rest of the books. Concerning pdf’s, I found a site where you enter the web address of the page you want converted and then you download the converted file. I’ve tried it a few times and it seems to work ok.
glen said this on August 26, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Sorry, forgot to list the website for pdf conversion!
http://www.htm2pdf.co.uk
glen said this on August 26, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Hi glen- that’s great, thanks for the link. I actually looked into PDF’ing pages (a couple of different people asked about it) and even though I can do it easily on my Mac, I decided against it, mainly because the pages aren’t staying the same once they’re posted – I’m constantly editing, adding drawings, etc. – and I decided it would be too much to keep up with. However, this is a great resource for anyone who wants to create a PDF from a page themselves so they can take it with them, and then discard it later. So I appreciate the help!
John Kearns said this on August 26, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Fantastic site! I made my way here by way of a Pottercast shout-out, and I’m very glad I did. I may or may not be skiving off work as we speak to spend the day here :D (I’ve had a bad week and could use the unadulterated joy that comes from Harry Potter world). Keep it coming! If each chapter page contains 50 illustrations I will view and linger on every one; they are too special not to.
So glad I found this site,
Woad_is_me [SlytherClaw]
woadisme said this on October 23, 2009 at 11:54 am
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAST TWO BOOKS?
Wendy said this on November 6, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Wendy, I’m posting the chapters one at a time, and still working on them. I’m about eight chapters into book five at the moment, but I’m posting a new one every 2-3 days. You can view recent updates on this page:
http://hpcompanion.com/updates
Or there are several other ways to follow if you want to get the updates yourself, which are listed here:
http://hpcompanion.com/follow
Thanks for reading!
John Kearns said this on November 6, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Thanks. I appreciate it. The art is gorgeous and I love the comments on each chapter. Sorry for the all caps.
Wendy said this on November 6, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Just have to say that I enjoy this site a lot. You wake thoughts about my favorite book series that I’ve never been thinking before. Amazing job and a great site.
I’m looking forward to see new posts. :)
MandaOwl said this on December 29, 2009 at 1:28 am
I’ve read the series twice. The next time, I think I will follow along with the HP Companion. That way, I will definitely remember the points that are most important in each chapter.
Sheri said this on January 11, 2010 at 10:08 am
I stumbled upon this site when I was just getting into HP for the first time during the past few months. I finished the series on audiobook during my drives to and from work because I don’t really have time to sit down and read. Stephen Fry (who reads the books) is a riot! I love your site and now I finally understand all of the HP hype among my friends. It would be awesome to follow your chapter analyses when I go through HP a second time. There are SO many things I missed! Love the art! Thank you for this wonderful website. I can spend hours here. LOL.
Chiyou said this on January 14, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Hi John, I thought this might be a good place to ask:
I very much enjoy reading your about the chapter sections and also cherish all the comments made by the fans. Since I have joined, I have twice gone through all the chapters on this site again to check if there were any comments I hadn’t read yet. Since there are still new fans coming to this site all the time of course there have been new comments. It’s quite a handful to go through all the pages, so I was wondering if there was a way to let us know when and where a new comment was added on, say, the books you’re not currently posting about.
Kim said this on January 29, 2010 at 11:15 am
Kim – if you look underneath the box where you type comments, there’s a little checkbox along the lines of “Notify me of follow-up comments via email” (I can’t see them when I’m logged in because I’m the author). But if you check that box whenever you leave a comment, you’ll be notified when someone else comments on the same post.
I know there are other folks who do it because I get stats on the number of people who are subscribed, and also posts on older pages tend to come in bunches, so if it doesn’t work for you you might want to just ask for help in one of the comment forums. :)
John Kearns said this on January 29, 2010 at 2:04 pm
John, thank you, I hadn’t even looked there. I’ll do that from now on. But I guess that means it won’t work for all the pages up until now, unless I post again.
Kim said this on January 30, 2010 at 5:37 am
Though I realize that you already have fanart for the dragon challenge in GoF, this piece is superbly awesome. http://bri-chan.deviantart.com/art/the-first-task-44869600 Just thought you might enjoy it.
Lydia said this on March 23, 2010 at 7:09 pm
John, I absolutely love this site! Is there any way I can get my artwork on here? I’ve emailed one already, but is there another way?
Jamie said this on April 4, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Hi Jamie! I just sent you an e-mail reply, but for anybody else who’s reading: the best way to contact me is via e-mail, at john@hpcompanion.com. I don’t open e-mail attachments for the sake of my computer, but if you post your art online somewhere, just send me a link. I’d love to see it. I can’t promise I will use it, for all the reasons stated above, but I always love seeing more artwork.
Thanks!
John Kearns said this on April 4, 2010 at 8:34 pm
I found this site recently and I want to say that it’s totally awesome!
Magga said this on April 16, 2010 at 9:21 pm
I just found this site, but I’ve noticed that you haven’t posted a chapter since May 2010. Is there going to be anymore updating of the site? I won’t worry too much about it until I get through the whole thing, however, at the rate I’m going that’ll be tonight!!! Love this site!
Chrissie said this on August 5, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Great site. I like reading the comment conversations after each page which often go off topic but its really difficult to find them again on a later date. Is it possible to add a Google search box or something to make this easier?
Snape_ftw said this on February 16, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Snape_ftw, I’ve actually tried to set up a better search (the one that comes with WordPress really sucks), but unfortunately WordPress prevents me from using a Google script or anything. So the best thing to do is to just do a search through Google, type “site:hpcompanion.com” and then whatever you’re searching for. That way it will only search my site.
Another option is, when you comment, there’s a little checkbox that says “subscribe to comments” or something like that (it doesn’t show up on my versions of the pages). If you check that, you can get an e-mail any time somebody posts another comment. This might be even more helpful, as we’re well past 5,000 comments site-wide and it’s a lot to search through. :)
Hope that helps!
John Kearns said this on February 18, 2011 at 11:05 am
I have…an obsession with pictures, and I was actually going to go through the pages again and save every picture, but then I just read you had even MORE! pictures (:O 3800 of them!!). I was wondering if you could compress them and upload them? or just email them to me?
My Pictures folder is 13.5 gigs and contains about 45,000 files, and it wants more!
keikii said this on February 21, 2011 at 12:31 am
keikii, I appreciate your interest, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to politely decline, for a couple of reasons. One is that all the artists on these pages have given me exclusive permission to use their work, and I feel like I would be betraying their trust if I just started e-mailing their drawings around (the idea of someone saving every one of them makes me a bit uncomfortable, too, but obviously that’s a risk I took in compiling the collection). Another reason is that I’ve spent years building up this collection and this website, and I feel like simply giving away all my hard work would be akin to Coca-Cola handing out copies of its secret recipe at the gates.
I found every image here through a months-long process of simply searching the internet; others are welcome to do the same. Sorry I can’t be more helpful than that.
John Kearns said this on February 21, 2011 at 7:04 am
I’m pretty new to this site, but I love it. All the art, the way it is posted, everything.
Rock on!
Dirigible Plum47 said this on March 20, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Te felicito!! Me encanta tu sitio! soy una Fan de LatinoAmerica y tu sitio es el mejor… Se lo he recomendado a todos mis amigos… estoy ansiosa de recibir las nuevas actualizaciones.
Maria Londoño said this on March 23, 2011 at 4:22 pm
i love this site. i have recommended it to every other mega fan i have encountered. recently, i stumbled upon another blog about HP and was rather upset to see that his site looked identical to yours.
i was wondering if you were connected, though i doubt it, and if you’re okay with this.
http://thelastmuggle.com
Lauren said this on November 1, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Lauren, thanks for the compliments! The other site you found is not related to this one, however they do have just as much right as I do to the template; both sites are made through WordPress.com, and this design is one I selected from a list of free options, not one I did myself. I actually discovered long after my site was up and running that it’s one of the more common templates, so I’ve seen it on several other sites myself (including at least three HP-related). Ah well.
Thanks for pointing it out though, I appreciate your concern!
John Kearns said this on December 2, 2011 at 3:46 pm
This website is truly amazing. I stumbled upon it via Pinterest and began reading the PS Chapter by Chapter. I think it does what Pottermore tried to do: it is an in-depth, interactive re-reading experience. Positively magical. Thank you!
KJ said this on December 6, 2011 at 2:30 pm