Five Awesome Years on the Lounge

Today is a special day for Leaky and all its loyal readers. Five years ago today the Leaky Lounge, our forum, was born, and Leaky itself changed forever: from a small news-posting blog to a worldwide community, from a one-way news posting service to a great depository of ideas, writing, theories, reading groups, creativity, laughter, parodies, essays, and much, much more. The Leaky Lounge blew open the doors of what was once a little site, and welcomed thousands upon thousands of valuable Harry Potter fans and their interesting, intelligent voices.

We’ll be celebrating all week, so head over to LeakyLounge.com; our game arcade is open and we’ll be issuing challenges for the more competitive among us all weekend. The moderators have opened new threads to bring back old memories; members are finding their first posts and posting about them here. And keep a wary eye out… those Harry Potter characters do like to pop in on special days. Our designated Lounge Birthday thread is here.

Thank you to everyone who has made the past five years on Leaky and the Lounge so special. Enormous thanks today go to Nick Rhein for proposing the idea: he worked very hard before he had any administrative help at all to get it open; all the rest of us could do was hand him Gatorade and a towel now and then. Today the forum runs thanks to the unbelievable dedication of our moderators and administrators, who work much harder than we ever ask of them and always do it with a smile.

Congratulations all, and thank you for an excellent five years! Here’s to five more!