Pottermore!

It's finally open! After months and months of delays and disappointments, Pottermore is finally open to the public! Yippee!

If you don't know what Pottermore is, you should - well, if you like Harry Potter you should. Pottermore is an online interactive reading experience for all of the Potter books. You look at and read background info for different scenes and chapters from the books. J.K. Rowling has written a bunch of new material for the site - character backstories, location histories, more in-depth object descriptions, and more. Basically it's a website to remedy the withdrawals all of us HP fans have been having since the last movie came out.

But the coolest part is that you get to be officially sorted into a Hogwarts house, which you then proceed to earn points for with other online participants. The house is decided based on your answers to various questions. It's like every other Facebook, MySpace, or general other social network quiz you took to find out which house you're in except for one thing - THIS ONE IS REAL. It's official. And you can't totally predict the outcome.

I've waited my whole life to be officially sorted. I've known deep down, since I began reading the Potter books, that I belonged in Gryffindor. How do I know? Because I pretty much AM Hermione. From the extreme obsession with school work and knowledge down to the rather large front teeth and male best friends, I am her. I know lots of girls feel this way. I have a friend who claimed she was Hermione, but hated school - how does that work? I really am her, with perhaps a bit of Tonks mixed in. A true Gryffindor. Nevertheless, I was concerned as I approached the sorting - it felt like I was actually a Hogwarts first year, praying to not be put in Hufflepuff (not that Hufflepuff is bad, per say, but I simply belong somewhere else). I could've been put in Ravenclaw, just like Hermione. But I wanted Gryffindor - and I got it! Woo! I'm official! Though I didn't really need a website to tell me so.

I haven't spent much time on the site - only enough to be sorted. But I am intrigued by the new material sprinkled throughout the site, and I am eager to learn more. I hadn't realized how much I really miss the boy wizard.