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History
of The Pensieve I officially published this website in December 2001. Back then it was under the domain 'www.thepensieve.co.za'. It was a culmination of 2 years of collecting pictures, information, opinons and my own thoughts and ideas (which I would quickly scribble down) for this website. It had been my aspiration build an interactive website and to share my knowledge and resources about Harry Potter with the world. It was also a way to express my self and to keep me busy and connected to the world of HP while waiting for the next book. At first I struggled to get recognized, I desperately wanted to affiliate with some of the bigger HP sites and increase the number of visitors to my site but they were no help, they never replied to my emails or even indicated that they liked my website. The hits were trickling in very slowly and I began to loose hope that The Pensieve would ever be a success. But I stuck with it and continued to build The Pensieve adding on more unique features, hoping to make a break. Whenever I heard the words 'Harry Potter' in a public place, I jumped into action and gave out my website card. Then, towards the middle of 2002, things began to happen. The number of visitors changed from 5 a day to around 1000 a day and eventually I was getting about 2000-3000 hits and about 20+ emails every day. My site was finally taking off. Version 1.0 lasted till late 2002 when I began revamping for Version 1.2:
Though I was happy about the number of visitors, problems were beginning to arise. Because I had so many people visiting, my bandwidth was growing and growing. My host was very unsympathetic to this and suddenly sprung on me a huge bandwidth bill. In a desperate effort to decrease the bandwidth, I began revamping and scaling down the size of my website. My host however, closed down my website and gave up my domain. I began immediately scouting for a better host, it seemed the South African hosts just couldn't offer me the kind of deal I needed to sustain a big website and fast hit rate. I found a very reliable and very efficient overseas host in InfinityServers.com, they offered me exactly what I needed and I registered with them at once and changed my domain to 'pensieve.net' ('co.za' is South African). I worked very hard to get my website more streamlined and up and running again and in May 2003, The Pensieve Version 1.2 was launched! I'm delighted that our number of visitors has soared in 2004 and we look forward to expanding The Pensieve even furthur in the future. My goal has always been and still is to create another world here, to capture a small aspect of the wonderful thing that JK has created. If exploring this site can enthrall you as much as even just a few lines of one of the HP books, then my job is done. The Pensieve truly is the place where thoughts are deposited... so deposit yours... I love the Harry Potter books because it's like another world that you can journey to. A world where you can escape all the worries of muggle life. A world where, like Harry, you're famous, you're inside him, you experience what he does. You have loyal friends like Ron and Hermione and Hagrid. And an everwatchful guardian in Albus Dumbledore and Sirius Black. You can feel the sensation of flying and playing quidditch, the wind whipping through your hair, the thrill of game. You can feel the magic in your finger tips as you hold your wand ready to perform a a spell and can feel the steam coming from your simmering cauldron. You can smell the overpowering perfume in Prof. Trelawney's stuffy classroom. You can scowl and swear at Malfoy and laugh at Fred and George's jokes. You can taste the butter beer as it slides down your throat warming up every bit of you. You can taste the delicious food in the Great Hall and the ice cold pumpkin juice. You can feel your heart pounding as Harry sneaks past Filch in his invisibility cloak. You can sense the fear when he comes face to face with Voldemort. You know you are never alone in the wizarding world, that you matter. Harry's world and the characters within is grounded in reality, with a fantastical twist. It is true escapism - a perfect blend of fantasy and real life, creating a world that is comfortable and characters that one can relate to. Harry Potter, the characters within, Hogwarts and the rest of world in which Harry lives is so complex, so thorough, it is truly a creation of genius that can never be matched. As one critic put it: "The world of Hogwarts is complete in every riotous, headlong detail. The richness and scale of Rowling's work is exhilirating ... but the real proof lies in JK Rowling's ability to draw the reader into Harry's world and make it seem believable." Now, doesn't that sum it up? The Pensieve is an object that appears in the 4th Harry Potter book and is the inspiration for this website. It is a shallow stone basin with odd carvings - runes and symbols, around the edge . Inside is a bright, whitish silvery substance. When Harry finds the Pensieve in a cuboard in Dumbledore's office, he describes (in his thoughts) the substance within "The surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind, and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid - or wind made solid - Harry couldn't make up his mind." When Harry touches it he is transported into Dumbledore's thoughts and memories. Like Dumbledore explains, when he feels as if his head is too cluttered with thoughts, he puts the tip of his wand to his temple and pulls out a stream of the silvery substance desribed in the Pensieve which he then deposits into the stone basin (Pensieve). His head then feels clearer and he is able to revisit his deposited thoughts when he needs to.
To
see an animation I made of Harry depositing his thoughts in the Pensieve,
click here.
- 2nd place for 'Most Potential' in the Dobby's Honour Awards:
- 1st place for Best Colour Scheme at the Wingardium Awards!
- 2nd place for Most Enjoyable Harry Potter site in the esteemed Wingardium Awards:
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3rd
in Best General Harry Potter site & Best Layout in The Wing. Awards
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History
of The Pensieve
