Harry Potter-anything has the remarkable ability to whip otherwise mature, well-meaning adults into teenager like obsessive, giggling frenzy. So when Pottermore was announced in June last year as an interactive platform with eBooks, games, and back stories authored by J.K. Rowling herself, Pottermania, understandably, was at a high not seen since the last book’s release.
Since then, the site has opened its doors to a select group of beta testers (an envied lot, I’m sure) with promises of an October public launch.
Now we learn that the launch will be further delayed as bugs are ironed out and flaws rectified. A post on the ‘Pottermore Insider’ blog reveals that the site’s creators are hard at work ‘making Pottermore even better’, listening to the beta testers, and fine-tuning the site’s technical backend, as a consequence of which the site will be offline for a few days starting today.
The post did not point to any possible future launch dates.
That Pottermore will be a massive hit can be taken for granted, even if the end product is sub-par, such is the hold of the Harry Potter brand. The Pottermore Twitter account already has close to half a million rabid followers, and every single Harry Potter fan I know is waiting anxiously for the site’s release.
I’m not a big fan of resurrecting literary characters and rehabilitating them to a second life. A literary character that has lived its natural life span, has seen its story come to a satisfactory end, ought to remain buried lest its resurrection destroy the magical appeal of the original narrative. In case of Harry Potter though, I’ll welcome this new addition, especially if it can help kill the damned Twilight franchise.
