My Freaky World Let's Having Fun With Me

The official Pottermore Insider blog revealed that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets may open very soon, though more details will be revealed next week.

We’re excited to announce that the first chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets are coming very soon to Pottermore.

We will reveal more about this next week here on the Pottermore Insider, as well as the Pottermore Gateway and the new Pottermore house noticeboards.

The blog, which announced that the House Cup will take place this Thursday, July 5, updated with which chapters were recently worked on for the second installment of the series on J.K. Rowling's interactive website.

Monday 25 June
Chamber of Secrets update:

This week, we’re finalising artwork for Chapter Seven, Mudbloods and Murmurs, and Chapter Fifteen, Aragog.

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Julian Thomas, Pottermore's chief technical officer, recently commented on J.K. Rowling's interactive website and how the team learned to accommodate for the high traffic the website sought, using Microsoft's Azure as a cloud provider, in a new report in The Seattle Times.

Thomas commented on how traffic on the site would spike once the second installment of the series, Chamber of Secrets, would open to the public, and noted that it would be "sometime this summer."

Do note that this summer ranges from anywhere from the end of June to all the way at the end of September, so it could be weeks to months away. We will have an actual opening date once Pottermore reveals it. The Pottermore Insider blog already announced that it is currently working on artwork for chapters of the book's moments on the site.

Thomas anticipates more such peaks occurring when new content is added: Such as when content for the second book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," launches. Thomas did not give a specific date for that but said it would be sometime this summer.

Pottermore.com will also be translated into more languages, including "some Far Eastern languages that will be announced shortly," he said, and Pottermore will also appear on more mobile devices in all sorts of forms.

 

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Although author J.K. Rowling stated on her newly-launched official website last month that she was currently in the process of writing the Harry Potter encyclopaedia, she updated this month with a bit of a change in plans regarding the future of the comprehensive text for the series.

What about the Harry Potter Encyclopaedia?

Updated May 2012
J.K. Rowling: I have been enjoying sharing information about Harry’s world on Pottermore for free, and don’t have any firm plans to publish it in book form.

 

 

This is what Rowling said of the progress last month:

What about the Harry Potter Encyclopaedia?
J.K. Rowling: For a long time I have been promising an encyclopaedia of Harry’s world, and I have started work on this now – some of it forms the new content in Pottermore. It is likely to be a time-consuming job, but when finished I shall donate all royalties to charity

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J.K. Rowling's interactive Harry Potter website Pottermore announced earlier this week via Twitter that new excerpts from several textbooks featured in the first installment of the seven-book saga, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone were released by the author.

The summaries could be found by location specific books in the library chapters throughout Philosopher's Stone, which will light up purple once you've hovered over them. A few teasers from the textbooks, which can be found in chapters 12, 14, and 15, can be read below. The full excerpts can not be reproduced due to copyright protection on all the new canon text revealed by Rowling.

Curses and Counter-Curses
- The Tickling Spell: Point your wand directly at your enemy and shout ‘Titillando!’
- The Leg-Locker Curse: Point your wand directly at your enemy and shout ‘Locomotor Mortis!’
- The Full Body-Bind: Point your wand directly at your enemy and shout ‘Petrificus Totalus!’
- Tongue-Tying Spell: Point your wand directly at your enemy and shout ‘Mimble wimble!’
- Jelly-Legs Curse: Point your wand directly at your enemy and shout ‘Locomotor Wibbly!’


One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi
- Dittany is a powerful healing herb and restorative and may be eaten raw to cure shallow wounds.


A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration
- Incomplete Transfigurations are difficult to put right, but you must attempt to do so. Leaving the head of a rabbit on a footstool is irresponsible and dangerous. Say ‘Reparifarge!’ and the object or creature should return to its natural state.


The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)
- The lesser charms are not very difficult to break and many of those that you learn as a young wizard will wear off in a matter of days or even hours.


The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection
- The Zombie dwells only in the Southern part of America. It is an example, like the Vampire, of the Living Dead and may be recognised by its greyish colour and its rotten smell.

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Charlie Redmayne, CEO of Pottermore, announced that the release of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on the site was "weeks away," and that more interactive pieces would be added to the site prior to its launch.

Redmayne, also stated the Harry Potter ebooks sold on the Pottermore Shop, brought in £3 million (nearly $5 million USD) its first month of sales. Redmayne noted that an additional five million new users registered for J.K. Rowling's interactive Harry Potter website since its official open on April 14, 2012.

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