PNN prank

Fan sites goad the gullible on April Fool's

  April 4, 2005 at 9:54 PM ET
  Cheeser     HPANA
  april fool's, harry potter fan sites, harry potter pranks, pnn, april 1

Oops, we did it again.

Webmasters of Harry Potter fan sites tricked and treated their visitors on April 1 with extravagant pranks, as has become tradition in the online fandom. Each year the foolishness gets more and more elaborate, and this year was definitely no exception.

Here's our 2005 round-up:

• HPANA
  • We took a page from last year's gig and converted to the wizarding world's premiere news source, PNN. Original articles by HPANA's staff included Geri's breaking story about an escaped Hungarian Horntail dragon; Natalie's exposé on performance-enhancing potions in Quidditch as well as the capture of criminal Muggle Mark Evans; Brenda's coverage of the new Bling-Bling line of Nimbus brooms and the report on Floo powder being linked to global warming; and finally Jeff's report on a certain highly-anticipated book by a well-known best-selling author.
• MuggleNet
  • The biggest of the big fan sites, MuggleNet announced it had been shut down by Warner Bros. and JK Rowling for copyright infringement. CBBC Newsround even mentioned it.
• The Leaky Cauldron
  • Fed up with crazy enthusiastic fans hounding them with questions and special requests, the editors of TLC brought in a professional.
• FictionAlley
  • The fan-fiction supersite was taken over by the Ministry of Magic.
• Sugar Quill
  • Joanie Squidward's Harry Potter and the Toenail of Icklibõgg had fans contributing to the story in order to get it done by July 16.
• Veritaserum
  • Making its star-studded debut this year, Veritaserum was taken over by none other than Sir Voldemort. Not just the site itself, but visitors' computers, too! (Better Brainwash the page, or Detect Ignorance Settings to see if you can fix it.)
• DanRadcliffe.com
  • This Dan-fan site did a gender-bender and presented its loyal visitors with Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) instead.
• Chris Rankin Online
  • The Percy Weasley actor announced he was giving up theatre in lieu of a budding music career as DJ Muppet Supreme.
• The Witching Hour
  • This site concerning the upcoming Harry Potter symposium in Salem, Massachusetts was overthrown by an evil pink hat.
• WWP's New Clues Forum
  • Always ready for a new challenge, fans of Wizarding World Press' Potter companion guides got busy picking apart the just-released Hogwarts, A History (a mere 700 Galleon purchase -- granted, the book is over 15,000 pages).
• Harry Potter Fan Zone
  • Regular readers got a big surprise when their favorite Potter site had gone to the dark side -- Star Wars, that is.
• The Quibbler
  • The Quibbler Newsmagazine flipped its layout upside down to fool its vistors.
• VideoEta
  • Non-Harry Potter site VideoEta scared a fair number of fans by announcing that Frankie Muniz was replacing Daniel Radcliffe in the remaining films.

Finally, both HPANA and our friends at Diagon Alley treated fans with mega-spoilers for the upcoming Half-Blood Prince book.

We're sure there was more mania out there. Know of any? Please let us know! The countdown to 2006 begins. Don't say we didn't warn you this time!

(You can also check out last year's April Fool's round-up.)