So you thought that all the fan-aticism over Harry Potter ended after the books and movies released? You couldn’t have been more wrong. With games, discussion forums, trivia and virtual fly-your-own-broomstick experiences, Potter-inspired websites are the new in thing, for fans. The websites are those threads that connected Potter fans globally to form a pretty chain. Nikitaa Rao, a techie admits that she logged on to Mugglenet (one of the more popular Potter fan sites) to try her flying skills out with the online simulator. “It was fun to read about Harry grabbing the snitch and the next minute log on to the site to try it myself,” she says. Others like Sandhya Ravikrishnan add, “There are a few websites which keep updating news from Rowling’s and Harry’s world, on a daily basis,” she says. “I visit them often, for old times sake,” she adds, with a wee touch of nostalgia.
With more kids prefering PCs to paperbacks, these fan websites seem to have become a predecessor to the books. Sheeja, a mother of a ten-year-old says that though her child hasn’t read Harry Potter yet, he plays quidditch on the HP website. “He also has a username for himself and says he belongs to Slytherin,” she says with a bemused look.