Hello again! I’ve been out of town on a summer vacation, but wanted to dive back in here and get another new page up. And this is one of my favorites. Ginny is actually the first character page I created, but for various reasons I’ve kept it stored in my back pocked up until now. I love her as a character, and though I spent several years hoping for Harry and Hermione to get together (my relationship with my wife has a lot in common with Harry’s relationship with Hermione), I gradually got used to his marrying Ginny instead, to the point where I now can’t see it any other way. So, well done Jo! And here’s a tribute to the youngest Weasley. Enjoy.
Contest Results
•June 27, 2011 • 9 CommentsSo… the results are in! If you missed the original challenge you can find it here.
I would say that as a general rule, you all did pretty well. A couple of different people looked through the pages on this website to determine which chapters had the most artwork – and interestingly got different answers from each other – and generally had stronger scores than most. Here were the top ten most-drawn chapters, and the number of points you got for selecting each one:
1. DH33, The Prince’s Tale – 84 (all 13 respondents guessed this one)
2. DH36, The Flaw in the Plan – 42 (8)
3. HBP24, Sectumsempra – 39 (10)
4. PA21, Hermione’s Secret – 36 (3)
5. HBP14, Felix Felicis – 33 (3)
6T. GF23, The Yule Ball – 30 (6)
6T. DH32, The Elder Wand – 30 (2)
8T. HBP2, Spinner’s End – 29 (2)
8T. DH19, The Silver Doe – 29 (8)
10T. HBP27, The Lightning-Struck Tower – 28 (2)
10T. DH8, The Wedding – 28 (1)
10T. DH34, The Forest Again – 28 (2)
Here are the other chapters that were guessed that weren’t in the top ten:
13. DH31, The Battle of Hogwarts – 27 (11)
14T. OP28, Snape’s Worst Memory – 26 (10)
14T. OP35, Beyond the Veil – 26 (4)
16T. PS12, The Mirror of Erised – 24 (2)
16T. OP10, Luna Lovegood – 24 (1)
19. HBP26, The Cave – 23 (6)
20T. PS1, The Boy Who Lived – 22 (5)
20T. CS17, The Heir of Slytherin – 22 (1)
20T. PA15, The Quidditch Final – 22 (1)
20T. OP21, The Eye of the Snake – 22 (1)
20T. OP34, The Department of Mysteries – 22 (2)
27T. PS2, The Vanishing Glass – 20 (1)
27T. PA17, Cat, Rat, and Dog – 20 (1)
33T. HBP28, Flight of the Prince – 19 (3)
33T. DH4, The Seven Potters – 19 (2)
33T. DH23, Malfoy Manor – 19 (3)
39T. OP36, The Only One He Ever Feared – 18 (4)
39T. PA14, Snape’s Grudge – 18 (1)
46T. PS5, Diagon Alley – 16 (1)
46T. DH7, The Will of Albus Dumbledore – 16 (2)
52T. DHe, Nineteen Years Later – 15 (1)
58T. GF20, The First Task – 14 (2)
68T. PS16, Through the Trapdoor – 13 (1)
109T. HBP1, The Other Minister – 10 (1)
143T. GF34, Priori Incantatem – 8 (3)
171T. OP18, Dumbledore’s Army – 6 (1)
178T. DH21, The Tale of the Three Brothers – 5 (1)
Here are the chapters that were commonly drawn but guessed by nobody at all:
16T. HBP30, The White Tomb – 24
20T. PS6, The Journey From Platform Nine and Three-Quarters – 22
26. HBP5, An Excess of Phlegm – 21
27T. PA8, Flight of the Fat Lady – 20
27T. PA22, Owl Post Again – 20
27T. OP29, Careers Advice – 20
27T. HBP15, The Unbreakable Vow – 20
And finally, just for fun, the least-drawn chapters of all:
194T. GF6, The Portkey – 3
194T. OP17, Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four – 3
194T. DH12, Magic is Might – 3
197T. GF3, The Invitation – 2
197T. DH3, The Dursleys Departing – 2
197T. DH25, Shell Cottage – 2
———————-
SO. There is a prize that needs awarding. And I’ve actually decided to give out not one, but two prizes. First, here is our score list (and let me know if I counted yours wrong, it’s possible):
Maximum Possible Score – 380
Berit – 362
Heather – 350
Anastacia Malfoy – 346
Will – 345
Lorena – 337
Squib71 – 336
Natalia – 332
hazelwillow – 329
Andrea – 316
Clare – 296
Josiah – 272
Danielle – 272
hpboy13 – 242
So Berit is our winner! But there’s one more prize I want to award, for someone who got in just under the wire and selected what proved to be the most difficult chapter – DH8, The Wedding, was the only chapter that was in the top ten yet selected by only one contestant. So for nailing that response, I’m also going to give our illustrious prize to Clare. Congrats to you both! And I’ll be emailing you soon to discuss what pages you’d like to see on the HPC.
Thanks everyone, it’s been fun. :-D
John
Character Portrait: Harry James Potter
•June 24, 2011 • 1 CommentIt’s been five months since my first Character Portrait debuted, and it quickly became one of the most popular pages on the site. I especially laughed at the number of messages and comments I got the day I posted the epilogue, finishing the chapter-by-chapter project, saying something along the lines of “Good! You’re done! Now you can do more character portraits!” Apparently I missed my true calling. But these are a whole lot of fun to put together (if a whole lot of work; they take many times as long to construct as my chapter pages did), and I’m looking forward to getting more on here. So what better time to start than now? And what better character to choose than the one who started it all?
Hope you all enjoy. ;)
Character Portrait: Harry James Potter
Contest!
•June 23, 2011 • 24 CommentsSo my waking up early this morning to check out Pottermore turned out to be kind of a dud, as I really didn’t learn anything substantive that I didn’t already know. I’m trying to stay optimistic but I’m nervous about it. I really don’t love the idea that a million folks get an extra 2-3 months to play with the site before everyone else. It just seems that the people most likely to be shut out for that time are the kids who live and die with these books, no? After all, they’re the ones who have never been to a convention, never been part of a fan site, don’t have any connections. It strikes me as going against everything Rowling once stood for in the way she guarded the books’ secrets before they were released. But, we don’t know how the million people will be selected. Maybe she’ll prove me wrong. I hope she does.
Anyway… MORE importantly! I’ve decided to have a little contest on this site, just for fun. As I’ve worked through the books I’ve always been fascinated to see which scenes artists choose to draw, and which they don’t. Some of the most dramatic scenes in the books, I can’t find a single quality depiction of. Other more mundane moments seem to be drawn by everyone. So my question is: Who can guess the ten Harry Potter chapters that feature most prominently in my collection?.
Here’s how it will work: You guess which are the ten most commonly-drawn chapters in the series (books 1-7 only). Then, tell me what you think they are in a comment on this page. Then, I will score each chapter you list based on the total number of drawings I have archived for it – so, for instance, if you list Deathly Hallows chapter 33, you’ll get 84 points (hint, hint!), whereas if you list Goblet of Fire chapter 3, you’ll get 2 points. The person with the highest score wins. If there’s a tie, I’ll break it by selecting the person who posted their list earliest. Less time to research and/or copy other folks’ answers, you know.
Keep in mind that this is highly, highly unscientific. My library has roughly 4,000 images in it, but it consists only of certain artists and certain pieces by each of those artists. So you might have to get inside my head a bit to do well. And while I don’t have a fancy expensive prize, I *will* let the winner choose the next character for whom they would like me to build a character page. And if they like, perhaps give a bit of help in choosing quotes and/or artwork for it as well.
Let’s call the deadline this Sunday, June 26. If you need a list of the chapters, there’s a very convenient one on this very site. ;) Have fun with it, and good luck!
Harry Potter Off Camera: Year 7
•June 19, 2011 • 1 CommentI know I said in my last post that I’m anticipating posting less often now that the books are complete; however, I’ve experienced something interesting the past few days, in that my newfound freedom to write and post ANYTHING I WANT has inspired me to work on the site even more. :) It’s so freeing to have options! But I figured a good place to start would be with Harry Potter Off Camera, Year 7, which is one of the most-requested pages in the history of this site. For those who weren’t here for the other Off Camera pages, the idea is that these are scenes that artists drew from the time of the seventh book, but which didn’t fit in my Chapter-by-Chapter section because we didn’t specifically see them happening. They’re a lot of fun to put together, and I hope as much fun to read.
Harry Potter Off Camera: Year 7
Finally, while browsing the site you will probably notice that I’ve now set our banner images to rotate among all those that have ever been posted here. I did this partly because we aren’t really *in* a particular place in the story any more, and partly because most of you never got to see the site with the older images, and I think it’s fun to see them again. So, hope you enjoy it! If you want more info on the banners, including the artists and when they originally posted, you can find it here:
hpcompanion.com/faq/banner
The Future of the Harry Potter Companion
•June 16, 2011 • 27 CommentsTo all of my wonderful readers:
I want to begin by saying an enormous Thank You to all of you. I have been working on this project for three and a half years, and to see it come to completion is a gratifying, exciting, and yes, relieving day. I wasn’t always sure I’d make it here, but you all have stuck with me and for that I will forever be grateful.
I also want to take a moment to thank a few readers in particular; I know not everybody reads the comments on this site, but for those who do, some of these names and the commentary they have written have become as indispensable a part of the site as my own writing. So to hpboy13, Anna1, Natalia, Kim, Grace has Victory, Jose Lopes, elizabethauthor, Billie, rtozier, kim, Andrea, Irene M. Cesca, and the many many others who posted less frequently but just as eloquently: thank you, so much, for all that you have added to this experience, for me and for the many others who have visited. Many of you have been here since very nearly the beginning, and I’m honored to have had such thoughtful, interesting, and friendly people along for the ride. And I know that for each person I named there are many more lurkers out there who have been coming just as long and feel just as much a part of the site, even if they’ve never left a single comment or e-mail. And while I don’t know your names, please know that I’m exceedingly grateful to you as well.
Now, of course, I need to address a question I’ve heard many, many times in the past few weeks: What’s Next?
The answer isn’t a simple one. I started this project with a feeling of unfinished business; many of you know that I was a member of the Harry Potter Lexicon staff for several years but left when things veered in a direction I couldn’t agree with (and rather publicly and dramatically, at that). That site still sits unfinished. So I now have a profound sense of satisfaction with seeing Harry through to completion that I desperately wanted back in 2007. My life has also changed substantially since then; my son was born and is now nearing his second birthday and needing more time from me, and I have a job that I love that is taking up more and more of my time as well. The hours I once spent cataloguing Harry’s world seem to dwindle more each month.
At the same time, however, I still see a void that I would love to fill. The old guard of Harry Potter websites – which were built as the books were being released – are falling off, and very little has yet sprung up to take their place. I suspect as a new generation grows up, never having seen a midnight release party, the fandom will change dramatically and more sites like this one will come into being. In the meantime, there are things I would like to see that don’t exist anywhere else, and I see a fit for them here. It’s also exciting for me to think about doing something a bit different, yet still for the site. Things I’d like to still see through include:
–Finishing several more ‘Off-Camera’ pages;
–More character portraits;
–A guide to the Harry Potter canon beyond the seven books;
–A more robust essay section, including essays penned by folks other than me;
–And possibly a few other small additions, depending on how long certain other sites remain available.
There will also, of course, always be new fan art and new fan artists too, and I would love to continue incorporating those into the site as well.
There’s another wild card that’s sprung up in the past twenty-four hours, too (I have such timing, don’t I? And you all thought I was coordinating with the movie release…). Many of you are probably aware by now of what is apparently J.K. Rowling’s new site, pottermore.com. It’s appearing as thought it might open to the public today, and at this point I have no idea what it will contain or how it might affect the content of this site. I have long considered one of the strengths of this site to be its perspective – I didn’t even begin on it until we had basically stopped getting new information about Harry’s world. If we do get lots of new information now, I will likely take some time to really consider the best way to integrate it before making any changes to the site’s current format.
So the short answer is that I expect to continue updating things for some time; however, it will probably not be with anything like the regularity I have generally followed over the past couple of years. Once the projects I list above are finished, I expect I’ll drop off even more and just stop by from time to time to check in on the comments and perhaps add a few new pieces of art. But my hope is to keep it operating, updated, and relevant for a very long time, even as its actual growth slows.
I hope that you all will continue to make comments, to comment or e-mail me with suggestions for the site, and still check back from time to time (or keep me on your RSS or Facebook feed) to see what’s going on over here. Writing 199 pages about Harry Potter wasn’t always easy, but my overwhelming feeling is that it has been a heck of a lot of fun. And I’m more grateful to you all for that than I can say.
See you at Hogwarts!
John
Deathly Hallows Epilogue
•June 15, 2011 • 5 CommentsHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, epilogue: ‘Nineteen Years Later’
(New banner artwork by gerre)
