Some Potterheads are seriously not happy with the new Pottermore — here’s why

J.K. Rowling’s website, Pottermore, launched back in 2009 as sort of an ever-expanding Harry Potter companion website. It was set up as a journey through each book, and once you unlocked all the secrets of one book, you got to move into another. Oh, and the site also sorted you into Houses (and somehow I got put in Ravenclaw) and everyone was competing for the House Cup. It also was a new way for us to experience the books, and for Rowling to share some never-before-read information about the Wizarding World, and Harry Potter himself.

That’s how it always was — until this week. There’s a brand new Pottermore site on the Internet, and it’s being met with mixed feelings.

While the site still functions as a companion to the HP series, there are some new things in there, too. The homepage brings you to an extensive FAQ written by “The Pottermore Correspondent,” who is not Rowling, or Rita Skeeter. In it, all sorts of questions are answered as to why Pottermore changed, and what we’re going to find now, which is more news-y articles, but still the same old hidden treasures for wizards and their magical world.

However, gone are the houses, which I guess means I’m stuck in Ravenclaw forever. In it’s place, there are loads of in-depth articles about HP, along with other information like what we’re going to find in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and the fact that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is still NOT a prequel. The site promises to bring us new information about both of these things, and that’s pretty cool, since we’ll be getting information about them straight from the source.

But I miss the Houses! AND DUELING! And the fact that I felt like I was living the HP story myself as I explored each book on the site. Pottermore is doing a great job easing a lot of these worries over on Twitter, and promises that the site is still in the process of changing, and popular features like the Sorting Hat will be back eventually. On the bright side, it’s completely mobile friendly, and there could be a Pottermore app in the near future, too.

Love it or hate it, maybe without this redesign we wouldn’t have gotten that amazing Potter Family backstory that launched on the site yesterday. And besides, the homepage now brings us to a background of Fawkes’s phoenix feathers. Pottermore was bound to burst into flames and rise from the ashes eventually. And if Rowling likes it, we can learn to like it, too.

(Image via Warner Bros. and Pottermore.)