The only chapter that I really remember being an exception to this rule is this one right here. I remember reading it initially and just being stopped in my tracks. What the heck could that be referring to? I thought about it for a few seconds before giving up and plowing ahead with the reading, but you probably could have given me a year to guess and I wouldn’t have come up with the right answer. Ah well.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, chapter five: ‘An Excess of Phlegm’

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, chapter four: ‘Horace Slughorn’

I’m back today with more as we start to dig into Half-Blood Prince – and by dig in I mean introduce our protagonist. But I do love the scene between Dumbledore and the Dursleys; it’s nice, after books and books of the family being tormented, for someone to give them what they deserve without descending to their level, so to speak. Item #1,263 on the list of reasons Dumbledore is awesome, no?

Anyway, here goes:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, chapter three: ‘Will and Won’t’

I first started e-mailing artists to ask permission to use their work on this website in November of 2008. I wasn’t sure how many I would be able to get in touch with (or how many would say yes), so before sending out the e-mails I sat down and wrote myself a list. Who would I need to hear back from in order for this site to be viable? I ultimately divided the artists into several categories, and the top category was simply the six or seven giants of the fan art world. I wrote on that list that I couldn’t see doing the site unless I heard back from every single name on that list. I was lucky enough to hear back from all but one, and decided to move forward with the site despite what I felt was a glaring omission.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was starting to work on chapters for Half-Blood Prince, and as I looked through the artwork I remembered why that final artist was on my highest priority list: there are a couple of chapters coming up later in this book that I absolutely could not see being what I wanted without her. So I resolved to do whatever it took to contact her. And thanks to some help from reallycorking, I finally succeeded – it turned out my earlier e-mails had all gone astray, and she was excited to be a part of the site.

I could not possibly be more excited to welcome Mudblood428 to the HPC.

As you’ll see if you click the link to her page, Mudblood428 was probably my original inspiration for this website. And her drawings are some of the best Harry Potter fan art there is. So today I’ve added twelve of her best to the chapters that I’ve already posted – and rest assured, there will be more to come. Here are the drawings:

‘Good Luck, Harry’ from PS1;

‘First Impressions’ from PS4;

‘Happy Birthday to Yeh’ from PS4;

‘Gryffindor’s New Seeker’ from PS9;

‘Bad Dobby!’ from CS2;

‘It’s All Right’ from CS17;

‘Riddikulus!’ from PA7;

‘Expecto Patronum!’ from PA12;

‘Priori Incantatem’ from GF34;

‘What’s He Done to You?’ from OP28;

‘A Visit to Hagrid’s’ from Harry Potter Off Camera: Years 1-2; and

‘His Heart’s Desire’ from Harry Potter Off Camera: Years 1-2.

Enjoy!

I think the storyline that fascinated me the most in Order of the Phoenix was the concept that Dumbledore was having Snape teach Occlumency to Harry, despite the fact that Voldemort wouldn’t want it to happen (and despite the fact that Voldemort would inevitably find out it was happening, given his connection to Harry). Why would he do that? Well, now we shall know! Or have a working theory, at least. Here goes my best shot, and I’d love to hear what you all think:

Essay: ‘Harry Potter, Occlumens?’

By the way, a follow-up to one of my other recent posts. I’ve been in contact with the folks at Tumblr about the “blogger” I was so furious about, who had been stealing content from this site and from artists that I work with here. I spent hours today compiling a list of content she’d stolen (49 posts in one week), and I’m very grateful to report that Tumblr has served her an ultimatum to remove the posts within 48 hours or else have her account suspended.

I should add that I never would have asked for this if she’d simply given credit to the artists involved, and linked to their/my websites, but she was apparently unwilling to do so (when I asked her to start crediting, she instead stopped posting artwork). I don’t know if she was worried people would stop following her for the sake of other sites, or simply couldn’t be bothered to take the time to link, or what. But at least there is now some justice. What was it that Dumbledore said about choosing between what is easy, and what is right….? ;)

Harry Potter Off-Camera: Years 3-4

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, chapter two: ‘Spinner’s End’

On a side note, I wanted to mention that I recently ran across a Harry Potter “blogger” on tumblr. There’s a fairly large community of folks there who race to post as many HP-related posts as humanly possible (this particular person opened her account in December and has 137 pages or something). In their haste, none of them credit the sources of their material, but this particular girl apparently happened upon my website a few days ago, because she posted twenty updates in two days which were all content taken directly from this site, none with credit given, none with links, and tons with artwork used that didn’t credit the artists, either. I let her know I wasn’t happy with it and she stopped stealing my content, but she’s still posting stuff off of artists’ websites (especially Marta T’s) without giving any credit. Now these hundreds of people are seeing artwork (and reblogging to hundreds more) without knowing who drew it. From there it’s not long until others start taking credit themselves.

These artists are doing all of us a favor by posting their work online so we can enjoy it along with them. When things like this happen, it encourages people to stop doing just that out of fear that their work will be stolen. We all lose when that happens. So if you blog yourself, don’t be the person who steals other people’s work without credit. We don’t need more people actively working to make the world suck a little more.

/rant

My predictions, of course, were awful, and I wish I still had them somewhere. But I think of all the information we got ahead of time, the bit that intrigued me most was the fact that the first chapter of Half-Blood Prince was one Rowling had considered using before. How, I wondered, could that be? What is the topic of this mysterious chapter that could fit in multiple books? I pondered for hours, and what now seems like an obvious answer was anything but.

It’s a shame that for our kids, this will just be another first chapter in another book. At least we can regale them with stories of one of the greatest publishing phenomena in the history of the world. :)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, chapter one: ‘The Other Minister’

As you can probably guess, when it comes to fan art, I have a very strong preference for canon – I’ve never been big on drawings that depict Harry Potter characters doing things that are outside the spirit of the books. But there is a category of art that falls into the grey area in between – that doesn’t necessarily correspond to specific scenes in the books, but that nevertheless is something that makes sense as part of the story line. Many of my favorite drawings fall into this category, and so from the infancy of this website, I’ve been thinking about what the best way would be to get some of those drawings involved.

Well after spending some pretty significant time the past few weeks pulling things together, I’m proud to debut a new section that I’m calling Harry Potter Off Camera. As I explain on the title page, it’s a section that’s all about the things the characters are doing when we aren’t reading about them – in movie terms, when the cameras are off. For example, during Harry’s first year we never hear of anything that happens to him in January. It’s not that January didn’t happen that year; he was simply doing things that weren’t interesting enough to put into the books. These drawings help fill those gaps (as well as the time before and after the stories take place).

So I’m starting today with a single page, consisting of off-camera drawings from Harry’s first two years at Hogwarts. And rest assured there will be more to come – some this week, and then lots more down the road.

Hope you enjoy!

Harry Potter Off Camera: Years 1-2