Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Pottermore.. getting in was an experience!

My alarm goes off at 6:07 in the morning. 6:05 is too early, 6:10 is too late. So at precisely 6:07 the alarm sounds off like a rally cry to start the day. I have snooze set for 5 minute increments. Normally I hit it once. Sometimes twice. Today I snoozed until 6:32. I followed my normal routine. Restroom, take the dog out for his morning relief, then feed him. I sat in my chair and applied my moisturizer. Typical morning. A little behind, but otherwise typical.

While waiting on the moisturizer to absorb I normally check Twitter and Facebook on my phone. I left the phone in the bedroom. No biggie. Grabbed my laptop. Saw a post from Kristina Horner on Twitter that had her user name for Pottermore. I smiled and thought “YAY Kristina!”. I moved over to Facebook and saw my friend Andrew, aka, Mad-Eye Moody, posted he got into Pottermore and it was time stamped 28 seconds ago!

My heart hit my stomach, or my stomach lurched to my heart. Not sure which organ moved but I was immediately excited and nervous all at once. I rushed over to Pottermore.com. It was sitting there with a clue! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

The clue read: "In the Gryffindor versus Slytherin Quidditch match, in Harry's third year, how many points is Gryffindor leading by before Harry catches the Golden Snitch? Multiply this number by 35."  Yeah, I know THAT off the top of my head!

Anyway, after getting the answer I did the URL thingee you have to do. Low and behold a page showed up that looked much like a random webpage talking about Harry Potter. It was a UK site (I saw that in the URL). I was confused, and grumpy. How could I have messed up?!?!?!?!?!  Then I saw, on the right, was a purplish square and a quill sitting at the bottom of the square. I was in the right place! Now, I had to make the quill float.

Saying Wingardium Leviosa did not make it float. It was worth a try. I ran my mouse in the area and it began to float. Then it crashed back down. AH! Don’t tell me I was going to miss out on Pottermore over THIS part. So I tried it again. Same results. A third time. Same results. My hands were trembling intensely. Nerves were raw. Heart was racing even harder. I was going to miss out over the quill!  Then I heard Hermione’s voice in my head remind me that repeating a pattern will repeat results. So I tried something different with the mouse. And my quill floated!!!!!!!! Thank you Miss Granger! 10 points to Gryffindor!

I was given a link to click to “Begin your journey.”  This was like being handed a note saying to go to Platform 9 ¾. My heart was still pounding. My hands were still shaking. I arrived at the next step and was asked for my name, birth date, email address, country, and password. The excitement was so much that it took all I had to stay in my seat! I wanted to jump up and down! But I wasn’t done. I clicked enter and was taken to yet another page.

It was the book with the names of magical children who should receive Owls to Hogwarts. My name was at the top of the list. I screen printed! Then I was at a place where I was given 5 randomly selected names to choose from.  I didn’t screen print this page to show you all the random choices, but in the end I chose ChaserWolf60. As most of you know, I am of Werewolf, Vampire, Klingon, Wizard blood. So Wolf made sense to me!  Am I a Chaser? Not in the Quidditch sense. But I am a chaser. Of dreams, of knowledge, of enlightenment, of the perfect glass of tea. So ChaserWolf makes complete sense.  

I. Was. In.

I hit Twitter and Facebook straight away to announce my joy. Sorry about the all caps folks but I was more excited than you can imagine.  With Pottermore only taking a million beta testers before it opens up in October for everyone it is a special thing to us die hard Potterheads.  The release of clues is at random times and they only take less than 150K people per day. This is intense. I feel very lucky.

I received my email a little under an hour later. This was like my letter to Hogwarts. I nearly died. What I wait for now is my invitation to officially explore Pottermore. This will roll out in the next few weeks. That, my friends, will be like boarding the Hogwarts Express. No words for how exciting this is.

One of the things I most look forward to, in addition to all the new material (we rabidly want that!) is the Sorting Hat quiz. These questions were written by Queen Rowling herself. This is as close as we will come to being actually sorted. I am sure it will come out Slytherin, but I really want to see it for myself. I want to know that I have been right about who I was all this time.

Good luck to those of you still trying to get into the beta. It’s okay if you don’t make it – there is October and it will be open for everyone. I look forward to seeing you all around the Castle! 








1 comment:

  1. I'm SO excited for you! I'm going to try and get up and go for it tomorrow. *crosses fingers*

    ReplyDelete