The Potter Alliance's Quest for Pottermore Early Access

In case you're not a fan of Harry Potter or have been living under a rock, there's this website J.K. Rowling is rolling out in October called Pottermore. Yeah. It's a big deal in the Harry Potter fandom. It's basically a new way of reading and enjoyed the series. So last night, me and three other friends pulled a Hell of an all-nighter, waiting for the release of the first clue to gain early access to the Pottermore beta. Spoiler alert: we dominated that Magical Quill challenge.

The team at Pottermore and J.K. Rowling announced that there would be a contest for early access to Pottermore (meaning not waiting until October) and 1 million lucky people would get in. After reading up on all the features the website will host, I made it my soul mission in life to get early access to Pottermore.

Another one of my friends, Sarah, was likewise interested in early access to Pottermore. We both decided back when Pottermore was announced to team up so that at least one of us could get early access (we assumed at least one because 1 million people isn't a lot when you look at how many Potter fans are out there). A deal was struck.

After a bit of waiting, Pottermore announced how the 1 million early access challenge would go down. They would release one clue for each book for seven days and once available slots filled up they would close registration for that day. So there would be about 142, 800 available slots for each day.

The race was on and I must commend the Harry Potter fandom. They look out for each other. Instead of everyone racing to get there first, people stepped back and helped out their fellow Potter fan. Message boards and chat rooms all over the web were exploding with hints and possible ideas to the clue. During the most recent LeakyCon, attendees were given a special clue that would help them get registered and it included a time ("...after 12 AM PST...") and told them where to look ("Diagon Alley," which many assumed referred to chapter 5 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone). These attendees were told not to share this information with anyone else but many chose to divulge their hints and help out.

I was glued to my computer starting at 10 PM CST. There were many rumors about when the clue would go live. Sarah and I started a Skype chat room which Sarah named "Potter Alliance." We were later joined by Maxine and Alex. We spent most of the night coming up with theories and reading message boards and Tumblr. A Ravenclaw subreddit had a system set up where they would send out a mass e-mail when the clue went live.

Now 12 AM PST translates to 2 AM CST. I wanted to die. I was so exhausted because I'd been up since 7:30 AM so I could go to yoga. The clue did not go live at 2 AM. By 2:30 AM, I decided I'd had enough and fell asleep. Luckily, I had the forethought before I went to bed to put my phone on vibrate in case Sarah texted.

At 3:01 AM, my phone vibrates, wakes me up, and I look at it to see, "Wake up the answer is 254!" I immediately went to my computer and registered as quickly as possible. When I finished registering, it was a glorious moment because I realized that I had made it up to eleven year-old me who waited for her Hogwarts acceptance letter so patiently.

Registration ended after one hour and 30 minutes.

For the rest of the night, I couldn't sleep. I talked with the Potter Alliance in our chat room about how excited we were that we all managed to get registered. I effectively pulled an all-nighter that was only interrupted by a 30 minute nap just so I could be one of a million people to be part of a new way of reading the Harry Potter series.

Does this make me a nerd and a little bit crazy? You betcha.

Was it worth it? Definitely.

So good luck to all the people who are trying to get in on the 6 day left! I hope you get as lucky as I was and have friends that care enough about you to text you to let you know that something important has happened. And now I'm going to bed because I've been up since 7:30 AM yesterday and the only rest I've had consisted of the 30 minutes previously mentioned and a one hour nap before dinner.