Thanks for visiting the Harry Potter Lexicon!

April 13, 2003
The DVD of Chamber of Secrets is out and it includes the Official Timeline of Hogwarts. Read this important note about the timelines of the Lexicon... thanks!

April 13, 2003
I've been editing and adding to pages left and right. I just uploaded about thirty revised pages, including one or two new ones. I'm not going to list all the changes here, but you will want to take a look at the new essay, entitled Harry Potter: The Truest Gryffindor of All?

I have also added some new information to the book five page, but this information includes spoilers of the plot. I have taken steps to prevent anyone from accidentally reading it, but even so, be careful.

Some have asked what will happen with the Lexicon when Order of the Pheonix comes out. Obviously, I'll be adding the new information as fast as I can, but it will take some time. I'll be looking for new artwork and essays to add and writing plenty of new pages myself. Good thing I'll be on summer break and will have time to put into it!

March 5, 2003
In my last entry, I mentioned that Disney Adventures magazine stated that the 101 Wizard cards in the video games were designed by Rowling. I said that I was trying to find out if that were true, but in the meantime I was going to start including that information in the Lexicon. Since then I have been informed by a source in the know that everything in the games is indeed either designed by or approved by Rowling. 

So what, you say? Well, for canon purists like me, that's a pretty big deal. That means that there are a lot of new things which must be included into the Lexicon, sure, but it also strongly suggests that other official products, the trading card game for example, are canon as well, if Rowling has the same relationship with them as she has with the game designers.

I don't have any word yet from Wizards--and they have ignored my emails asking for more information--so we can't be sure. But I am starting to rethink my position on what is and isn't canon and what will and won't be included in this website. 

And that means that I may have just set myself up for a LOT more work! I suppose I needed something to do between now and June 21...

February 22, 2003
I know some of you have decided that I must have given up on the Lexicon, what with the lack of entries here. It's true that I haven't been spending as much time on the site as I did before, partly because I'm getting closer and closer to being "done" until the next book comes out, and partly because I'm working on a book which is taking a lot of my time. But there have been changes and additions happening over the last two months, mostly small changes rather than whole new pages. I've updated the Order of the Phoenix page to include the new release date. I've also been editing the pages for some of the other books (although I seem to have misplaced my copy of Quidditch Through The Ages!). If you wander through the Lexicon, you'll discover new information here and there.

Of course, when June 21 rolls around, I'll be extremely busy. What fun it will be to have a whole new book's worth of material to write about! In the meantime, there are new facts turning up every so often. For example, the latest edition of Disney Adventures magazine includes a complete list of all 101 Famous Wizards cards from the Chamber of Secrets game. In the introduction to the list, the magazine states that these were invented by Rowling herself, which means that they must be considered canon. I am working on verifying that this is true, but in the meantime, I've started adding the considerable amount of information from those cards into the Lexicon. This will take quite some time, since almost every card includes information which applies to more than one Lexicon page. Also, there are some inconsistencies between the cards and the information given in other places in the canon. 

All of this will keep me happily working as we all wait for June 21.

Oh, one more thing. I have finally found a picture of Snape that I like well enough to include on the Snape page. The other one that's there has bothered some people because they think it makes the Potions Master look too nasty and gross. Personally, I think a lot of people romanticize that character too  much, but I will agree that the picture that was there made him look very bad. So I've added an alternative picture, a beautiful drawing by Bridget Haines called The Dark Mark. 

December 25, 2002

• The Chapter by Chapter pages for each of the books are being "upgraded" into Reader's Guides. The page for book one has been changed into the new format, although all the text and links aren't finished. Take a look and see how you like it. Eventually, there will be four main ways to use the Lexicon: the A to Z index, the Reader's Guide, the Site Search, and browsing using the menus. That should allow anyone to find what they want in a way that suits them.
• I am trying to find a way to contact Jenna who used to run the now-defunct Unofficial Harry Potter Fan Club website. If you can help me with this, please let me know.

• Since I last posted here, I have modified/edited/added to over one hundred of the five hundred pages of information of the Lexicon. Most of those changes have been minor: a new spell added to the Spell Encyclopedia, for example. Here's a few other of the updates and changes:
• added to and fixed links on the Site Sources and Resources pages
• added a page of Publishers in the Wizarding World
• added new information to the Founders page which came from a post on the Harry Potter Lexicon Forum.
• I've been working a lot on the Master Indexes, too. These are a top priority right now.

• A new map has been added to the Atlas, contributed to the Lexicon by Hermione. It's a beautiful map of the chambers under Hogwarts where the Philosopher's Stone was hidden.  I have added links to it so you can click on various places and be taken to relevent places in the Lexicon, but as a result the page is approximately 170k. If you have comments on that, either good or bad, by all means send me an email and express your view. If it seems like most people would rather not deal with pages of that size, I'll turn it back into just a normal map.

• I have opened a forum for the Lexicon. You can sign on and make comments, discuss your theories about the books, make suggestions for improvement, and so on. I'm doing this on a trial basis to see if the folks who come to my site find it useful.

September 17, 2002

• I'm sure you already noticed the biggest change around here: the new main index page and front door. The design for these was inspired by the Daily Prophet design seen in the films as well as the lettering on blackboards in Hogwarts classrooms. The effect is supposed to suggest signboards of a style you might find on Diagon Alley. I have received plenty of email about the new design, most of it positive. I am now working on placing that motif throughout the site, but since I have to edit each page individually, and since there are about 500 pages, it will take a while for the design to work its way through. 
• New essay: When Magic Meets Muggle Technology, by PrefectMarcus.
• Updates of note:
• artwork of Professor Binns
• quite a bit of added information to the Puzzles page

September 2, 2002

• Excellent new essay about Fawkes the Phoenix
• I have updated the page about the fifth book
• I am working on a new, complete index of the Harry Potter universe, with references linked to complete information within the pages of the Lexicon. It's called "The Harry Potter Universe A to Z." This is an ongoing project. I'm currently through N, although the links aren't all in place on every page. When this is finished, this index will provide the most complete Harry Potter encyclopedia in existence. If there are details that don't appear, please let me know and I'll add them.
• I have removed all counters and site statistic monitors from my home page to protect users from unwanted advertising and pop-up windows. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.
• New maps of the Quidditch World Cup are posted in the Atlas of Quidditch

• IMPORTANT NOTICE - A visitor to the Lexicon emailed me about an annoying pop-up advertising window that appeared whenever he browsed to my site. I was very surprised, since I don't put any advertising at all on my site. I understand that it's necessary for sites to accept advertising , and I might have to go that route myself soon just to pay the bills, but I really hate some of the underhanded tactics companies use.

Pop-up ad windows are bad enough, but this particular window doesn't even behave properly--it doesn't have the normal close button and won't respond to a right-click-close on the task bar button. The source of this ad is the website tracker on the bottom of the main page, so I didn't place the ad there. I had no idea it was happening at all. You might be surprised that I didn't know that this window was appearing, but I didn't. I use a wonderful piece of software called Internet Sweeper that keeps any of these extra windows from opening, so I never saw it. To add insult to injury, that ad generates no revenue for me, so while you all suffered, it didn't even help to run the Lexicon site. This is intolerable.

The upside  of all this is that 1) I have emailed a complaint to the company that gives me the tracker, but I don't expect that they'll do anything about it; and  2) I heartily suggest that everyone download and install a copy of Internet Sweeper, available at this website: http://www.bmesite.com/. This is a free program that has been highly recommended by, among others, ZDNet. 

If I can't get the company to remove the ad, I'll be removing that tracker from my site. That's too bad, since I do like seeing stats on usage, but it's not worth it if my users have to be hit with abominations like that pop-up. Stay tuned.

July 27, 2002

• New main timeline - same information, but formated WAY cooler.

July 24, 2002

• Where do I start? I counted and I've added or modified 97 pages since June 8, the last date I made an entry here. I can't begin to list everything, so I'll just mention some of the big changes:
• a lot of new information has been added to the Quidditch section.
• the Lexicon/Harry Potter FAQ has been updated--well, rewritten actually
• a new atlas is in the works, the Atlas of the Wizarding World, beginning with the Gazetteer, which is being added to on a regular basis
• probably the biggest addition is the new Main Index, which is currently under construction. You'll find examples of the new pages linked to the Main Index page.
• and the most anticipated (but still incomplete) addition is the Marauder's Map, which currently only includes some basic information, not the detailed castle map that everyone has been emailing me about. Tha's still coming.

June 8, 2002

• More new material added:
• the day-by-day calendar of Goblet of Fire is here, and it's, well, spectacular. This one was put together by AmyZ and she has done a wonderful job with it.
• The mysterious and dangerous chambers where the Philosopher's Stone was hidden have their own page. I added a detailed timeline of the Stone and made other additions and corrections
• additional magic items now include Quidditch balls, magic books, and a nice paragraph about the Vanishing Cabinet.
• an essay detailing where Neville Longbottom almost certainly calls home on the Longbottom family page

• Several new sections have been added to the Lexicon. Probably the most exciting is The Definitive Directory of Magical Devices and Items. This new list pulls together several separate lists of magical items and artifacts in one encyclopedia. I've been adding as many new items as I can (look up "doors," for example, and you'll find the door of the high security vault in Gringotts along with the doors of Hogwarts which Flitwick taught to recognize a portrait of Sirius Black.)

• I've been working on adding more material to some of the existing pages. I've added a lot to the page for Peter Pettigrew, for example. I've also been gathering some new fan artwork to add here and there.
• The Quidditch pages are also under renovation. Once I started organizing the information from Quidditch Through the Ages, I realized that one little page wouldn't be enough, so I've been working on reorganizaing that section. One of the first things I did was break it all up into separate pages, such as this one about Quidditch at Hogwarts. There's a lot more to come.
• Quite a few people have written to ask if I would consider allowing translations of pages from the Lexicon. Up until now, I have said no, just because I wasn't sure how to go about doing that and protecting my copyrights. But that's changing. I now have an assistant editor, Benjamin, who has translated the main timeline into French. He is working on translating other pages as well. When a page becomes available in French, an icon of the French flag appears in the left margin, as you can see on the original English version of the main timeline page. Click on that icon and you are taken to the French version of the page. This is something of an experiment, so by all means email me if you have comments or suggestions.

• Plenty of updating, added tidbits of information, and so on. I can't list every change. My goal is to finish adding the last details from GF and then get started on Quidditch Through the Ages...
• Latest new pages:
• merpeople
• old magic
• Chambers of the Philosopher's Stone
• Titles, names, and honorifics (includes "warlock" and "mugwump")
• Updated pages:
• chapter by chapter page for CS

• New pages: Chapter by Chapter, short synopses of each chapter in the books, contributed by William Silvester. I'm in the process of adding artwork and links to the four pages.
• New essay, from Leroyal Terrell Gould, III: The Unifying Theory.
• Many, many edits and additions here and there (check out the new artwork on the Dumbledore page, for example).
• Another new essay, this one from Carlos Velasco Medina, about banking in the Harry Potter universe.
• New timeline: detailed analysis of the events on the evening of June 6, 1994, which is the climactic scene in the Shrieking Shack toward the end of PA.

• I've added a Year Calendar to the Timelines section. 

• It does seem like there aren't many updates lately, I know. In fact, there is a lot of work being done, but you might not notice it right away. I have recently discovered that a lot of material from the Lexicon has been stolen by a number of websites. I have found everything from my maps to entire pages copied into other people's sites. This is particularly frustrating to me, since I've put an enormous amount of work into the Lexicon and it really hurts to have someone just steal that away and post it as if it were their own work. As a result, instead of spending my time creating new pages, I've had to work on adding some rudimentary security to the pages I already have. I am not stupid, I know that anyone who really wants to steal my work will be able to get around anything I set up. But at least this might discourage some of those who either through ignorance or wishful thinking think that if they see it on the web, it must be free for them to use. So I'm sorry that I haven't been able to work on new essays or new maps. For now, I'm working on copying my material onto newly designed pages that discourage theft. Hopefully this necessary work will be done soon and I can get back to the things I enjoy more and that you all enjoy finding in the Lexicon.
• I took a little time out this afternoon from the boring work to create a page for Cho Chang. I wanted to spotlight the beautiful artwork of Lisa Rourke who has kindly given me permission to publish her work in the Lexicon. I used her portrait of Cho on the new page. I'll be adding more of her work as soon as possible.

• I spent time this weekend doing a lot of editing. You'll find new links, new artwork, and new information all over the Lexicon. For example, check out the Diggory family page or the meaning of the name 'Malecrit' in the list of Wizards.
•  I also FINALLY got to work on the Weasley family page. I've now created separate pages for each member of the family. I've added some new artwork here and there as well. I didn't get the descriptions quite to the level of completeness that I would have liked, but it's past 1 am and I'm going to bed.
• As you might imagine, creating and maintaining the Lexicon is a huge job for one person. It takes a lot of time and also money.  In order to help support the site, I've added a page of recommended reading. If you click on any of the items on that page and order them from Amazon.com directly from that link, a nice percentage of the sale comes back to me. If you use the Lexicon link as your way into Amazon.com and order something else, a smaller percentage of that sale will also come back to me. If you're interested in supporting the Lexcion, please consider making a purchase. Remember, if you order an item directly through a link to that item on my page, it helps the most.
• I also added a new essay which discusses Ginny Weasley and her various relationships with other characters in the books. JKR has promised that there will be more "boy-girl" stuff in the next book, so I figured it was time for the Lexicon to start talking about romances and things like that. 

• I've added a new map to the Atlas: Ottery St. Catchpole and the surrounding area, showing the Burrow. 

• essay: Familiarity, A Key to Understanding Spellwork
• I've added links to two nice online Harry Potter quizzes which were put together by Annie Dicks for her website. You'll find them on the Hogwarts Journal page.

• New pages over the Christmas holidays:
• the four school houses
• Moaning Myrtle
• essay: Magical Ability and Magic Wands
• essay: Textbooks at Hogwarts
• New artists whose work appears in the Lexicon:
• Clio Chiang
• Alice Wack

• A couple of new pages have appeared on the Lexicon. 
• floorplan of Number 4 Privet Drive has been added to the Atlas of Wizarding Britain
• an Encyclopedia of Potions
• a page about the Kwikspell Course
• Christoph Siemens sent me some new artwork, and I've added his delightfully creepy picture of an Acromantula to the Bestiary.

• Once again, there are many edits, additions, and improvements all through the Lexicon. I'm adding links to many pages, new spells to the Spell Encyclopedia, new characters to the list of Witches and Wizards, and things like that. 
• I have added a new map to the Wizard's Atlas. This one is of Platform 9-3/4.
• I've also added a page for good old cowardly Fang the boarhound. I've been looking for a picture to put on that page, but no one seems to have included Fang in their artwork of Hagrid. Too bad...
• While I'm on the subject of pictures: I've been asked why I don't include pictures from the film on the Lexicon site. The fact of the matter is, it's illegal to do that without permission from Warner Bros. I have written and asked, but so far I've not been given permission to use any pictures from the movie. They did give me permission back in June to include the artwork from the books, but that's all they've done so far.

• I have revised and updated the page which discusses the mysteries surrounding the attack by Voldemort on Harry's family in 1981. After scads of email, some of which was downright nasty, I decided that it was worth an afternoon's work to make things clearer. There are still pages coming which discuss the priori incantatem effect and the fidelius charm, both key factors in our understanding of the events of that fateful night,  but they might have to wait until later. 

• Editing again, adding little details here and there. I have added a couple of spells from the film, but one of them, Lumos Solarum, really doesn't  fit into the canon. I have put it into the Encyclopedia of Spells, but with a disclaimer. I'm afraid I may have to do that with other details from the films when I add them to the Lexicon. While JKR had a lot of input into the creation of the film, she did not have final say and she did not approve every single detail. The film does not agree with the books on every single point, and for the purposes of this Lexicon, the books are considered the final word. 
• Elizabeth Dalton has written a nice essay about The Changing Image of Grown-Ups in the Harry Potter books which I just added to the "Delving Deeper into Harry Potter" resources of the Help/About section.

• After a discussion on the Harry Potter for GrownUps list, several members gave permission for me to include their comments about Harry Potter's status as a pureblood, half-blood, or 'mudblood.'
• Another essay what has been sitting here waiting for a final edit has finally made it into the Lexicon: Food and Drink in the Potter Universe.

• I added a schedule of classes by year to the Hogwarts Academics page. I also linked a new essay which explains O-levels and A-levels, tests which in the Wizarding World become O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s and which were a complete mystery to me (and a lot of other non-British readers).

• I added several new spells to the Spell Encyclopedia (it's amazing how many there are when you really look!)
• I added a new essay: Languages at Durmstrang by Eric Oppen. I still have a couple more that I'm working on.
• I broke the list of witches and wizards into several smaller pages. When it was all in one page, it was getting too large to open quickly and cumbersome to edit. I've added a number of new names to the list, including a couple of new Weasleys.
• And I still have a huge backlog of new material which I have been trying to find time to add to the Lexicon. Hopefully, I'll have all of GF, QA, and FB added before the new book comes out!

• Along with numerous edits and small additions here and there, I created a page about Aurors. (I've fixed this link -- sorry, everyone, and thanks so much to those who emailed me about it!)

• Hedwig finally got her own page today. 
• There's also a new page added for the Blast-Ended Skrewts. 

• There has been a lot of editing over the last few days. I've added a couple of new spells and a few new magic items. I'm also working on several new essays which I'll post soon. 
• I'm delighted to have been given permission by Christoph Seimens to add some of his artwork to the Lexicon. You'll find the first ones on the Nearly Headless Nick and the Voldemort pages. His contact information is not on the artists' page yet, but it will be soon.
• The movie opens in six days. I've received a video tape which includes snippets of the film, some interview soundbites, and about 14 minutes of candid video as various scenes were being shot. I've also been in contact with folks who have already seen the movie. I have made a decision to include at least some of the new information from the film into the Lexicon. The reference for these tidbits is (SS/f), which means the film version of Sorcerer's Stone. You will find new facts added to the Alohomora spell, the page about James Potter, and a few other places. I'll add more as more details become available. 

• I've been doing some general editing all through the Lexicon's 300+ pages. I actually discovered a couple of pages that still had the old formatting, which just goes to show you that I need to watch a little closer.
• I've added a delightful (if somewhat confusing, for us Muggles) essay by Edis Bevan. He gives us a taste of what a Muggle Studies textbook might be like...

• I have added several works of art done by Edgar Torne, a very talented artist. Edgar's work currently appears on the new Voldemort page and on the Hogwarts Ghosts page. 
• I am also adding new artwork by Phénix and Lord Voldemort. They contributed illustrations of J.K.Rowling and of the Niffler (and I'm going to add more soon.)
• I have been editing various pages, including adding quite a bit of information to the Dudley page.
• Amy Z, a frequent contributor to the Lexicon, has written a very nice essay about the plotlines in Prisoner of Azkaban. You'll find it in the "Delving Deeper into Harry Potter" section of the Help/About page.
• I've also added (finally) the essay by Rrishi Raote about the use of descriptive words in the Harry Potter books.

• The biography page for Lord Voldemort has been updated with a fantastic and comprehesive history of the most dangerous Dark Wizard of our age by contributing editor, Wednesday. Linked to that is a timeline as well.

• At long last, the essay by Ebony about generations in the Wizarding World has been added.
• I've uploaded pages detailing all the differences between British and US versions of the book. You can access them from the Help/About page.

• urces of the kind of information I don't include in the Lexicon, things like movie news and filksongs. The sites I've linked there are the ones I consider to be the best.
• I've added a page giving some contact information about the artists whose work I feature in the Lexicon. 

8/15/01

• After a number of requests, I have added a page about the Harry Potter Trading Card Game, with a couple of links and also a list of etymologies for some of the new spell names.
• I've been adding names to the master list of Witches and Wizards. Laura Freeman, one of the more prolific artists whose work is featured on the Lexicon, has contrubuted a number of wonderful portraits to add to that page. Check out her pictures of Hannah Abbot and Lee Jordan, for example. That page is getting a  bit, well, large, but it's worth the wait to see all the artwork.

• I've been spending a lot of time getting the Harry Potter for Grown Ups FAQ web site up and running. It's quite something! Check it out if you get a chance. The FAQ Site is a series of essays compiling and excerpting material from the  discussions from the Harry Potter for Grown Ups group. You'll find there the collected wisdom of over 1500 Harry Potter fans who have spent hours and hours thinking about and talking over details of the books in the message area of the group. I will be placing links in the Lexicon between the two sites, so watch for that. 
• I finally put together a map of the ground floor of Hogwarts castle, based on careful reading of the books. The Great Hall and the Entrance Hall take up most of the space. You'll notice that the trailer from the film does NOT agree with the arrangement as given in the books, and of course the books are considered canon and the movie is not. This is quite a nice map, I think. I'm working on more of them for the Atlas of Hogwarts.
• The day-by-day calendar of Prisoner of Azkaban is done and uploaded. This one was very tricky, since there was no way to make the dates actually fit any real calendar. I managed to put it together as logically as possible, but there are three main discrepencies that are noted at the beginning of that page.

• I've spent the last couple of days researching Diagon Alley. The result is a greatly expanded page of details about the shops there and also a map of Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. The map is of course not technically canon, but it does follow the clues given in the books very exactly. For example, since in SS5 Hagrid travels from the Leaky Cauldron to Madam Malkin's and when he gets there he has two ice creams in his hands, I made sure there is an ice cream parlor between the two. Shops that are described as smaller I made smaller. I added shops that are mentioned but not named (e.g. the stationery shop where they buy ink, quills, and parchment, which is mentioned as being next door to Quality Quidditch Supplies. All the most well-known shops seemed to be on the Leaky Cauldron end of Diagon Alley when I plotted them all out, so I made the far end a bit on the shabby side, with the junk shop, the second-hand robe shop, and Ollivander's way down there. All this research still doesn't make it canon, but it makes for a darned interesting map, in my opinion.

• I've created a new page for Nearly Headless Nick. The artwork on that page comes from a French site which includes tons of very interesting clip art-style illustrations. I have permission from them to include more of those pictures, but since they are designed for a black background, most of them don't work very well for the Lexicon. The one of Nick is very, very cool -- animated too -- so I'm glad it worked for that page.

The Harry Potter Lexicon has just been given permission by Warner Bros. to place scanned images of Mary GrandPre's artwork on various pages. This means that I'll be scanning and including some of her chapter art. I am excited to be able to include these wonderful drawings in the Lexicon.