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Around the end of June, muggle fans of Harry Potter’s adventures were quite excited with a bit of news that had been discovered by a certain hob of a fan. According to him, muggle author J.K. Rowling had released the title of the sixth book installment of Harry’s life, titled Harry Potter and the Pillar of Storgé. However, days after this title popped up, Ms. Rowling confirmed on her official site that the true title of the sixth book is Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

Finally, after fooling Potter fans all over the world and making international headlines, the hoaxer confesses.

The imposter is a 19-year-old male student at the University of Florida who wishes to remain anonymous (probably because if we knew his name, he'd be receiving Howlers till the end of time), so he shall be addressed as Mr. Storgé. The first thing the fraud wanted to make clear is that he never expected to receive so much attention for this prank. He hoped his fake title would "slowly creep through the Harry Potter community" much like an old fake title, Harry Potter and the Green Flame Torch (swatted down long ago by Rowling); he wanted to see how many people he could convince. But to counter the hoaxer's rationale, a spokesperson from The Leaky Cauldron offers that "people don't usually do this by creating elaborate video hoaxes contrived just to convince. A subtle 'Hey, I heard this is the title,' does a lot more to the 'infiltration' technique."

"It's rather impressive, though," Mr. D Vermilion, a recent Hogwarts graduate, offers. "It's kind of cool that the hoaxer was able to gain the interest of so many people in such a short amount of time. It really is funny in a way, actually."

Though it is particularly curious that Mr. Storgé and Ms. Rowling released both titles at the same time, Mr. Storgé claims that the "timing of the event was never planned; it was simple dumb luck". Furthermore, he says that he has no official connection with Warner Bros., J.K. Rowling, or other publishers of Harry's series.

Many Potter fans are still quite sour about the whole issue. Though it is fun and interesting to theorize future and past events in Ms. Rowling's ingenious book series, after a week of excited and obsessive chatter about Storgé, news of this cruel "joke" did not strike fans as funny.

"Bloody idiot," fifth year witch Suu Nodge says. "People as annoying and self-centered as Mr. Storgé should be magicked off the face of the planet... or at least admitted into St. Mungo's! It's mad! Honestly!"

Nonetheless, Mr. Storgé was still able to fool thousands of Potter fans all over the world. How did he manage this? In an interview*, he revealed that he enjoys computer graphics and video editing so he used Adobe Photoshop (for graphics) and Adobe After Effects (for video editing), two muggle computer (review chapter 142 in Dill Nate's Bits and Bytes of the Muggle World) programs that allow for creative and unimaginable alterations of graphics and videos, to create a video that looked like a secret part of Ms. Rowling's site. He "whipped the video up in about two hours" and when writing the message stating that the title was Harry Potter and the Pillar of Storgé, he simply tried to mimic Rowling's style of writing, which proved not to be so simple as many clever fans picked out certain wordings and phrases that seemed very unlike Rowling's flow even before Storgé was dispelled.

However, in Greek, Storgé means parental or familial love, which made the fake title further believable because Rowling has stated before that later in the Potter series, more information about Harry's parents will be revealed. We've yet to find that out, but Rowling tells us that "certain crucial pieces of information in book six were originally planned for Chamber of Secrets,"** the second installment of her Harry series. If it wasn't obvious enough to you before now, the title, Half Blood, quite clearly reveals that this book will have issues concerning blood (as in lineage). When thinking about Chamber of Secrets, a certain Tom Riddle immediately comes to mind, but as "compensation for having been messed around by [Mr. Storgé]," Rowling revealed recently that the half blood prince is neither Harry nor You-Know-Who. Knowing that the sixth installment has very much to do with the second, fans are already analyzing Chamber of Secrets characters as well as their ancestry.
And in a final effort to defend himself, Mr. Storgé challenges: "If I had not started the hoax, would we all know the real title to book 6 right now?" He claims that the reason he started the hoax was to hopefully cause Rowling to reveal information about the sixth installment in declaring Storgé a fan fabrication, as she supposedly did in doing so with Green Flame Torch. However, Rowling says, "The door opened on the very same day the Pillar of Storgé hoaxer struck, which left a lot of Harry Potter fans bemused ...", meaning she was planning to tell the muggles about the sixth book's title-- it was not thanks to Mr. Storgé nor was it completely random. If you have visited Ms. Rowling's site, it is evident that a site like that cannot be changed around in one sitting; it needs much time and effort.

Rowling warns her fans not to be tricked into believing anymore hoaxes such as the one presented to the Harry Potter community by Mr. Storgé. She states that all information found on her site will always be truthful and though she may joke at times, she would never joke like Mr. Storgé with her fans. "I am trying very hard not to feel offended that anyone thought this was possible. Storgé, for crying out loud. Come on, people, get a grip," Rowling says. She also asks her fans not to believe any Potter news until it is confirmed on her site.

So that's it? Will muggles be forced to forgive and forget and remember this annoying, insulting, confusing and humiliating experience just like that? Apparently, yes. No charges have been pressed against Mr. Storgé as of yet. However, Argus Filch would like to add, "Take the nasty bugger to the dungeons! Forever! He waited until now to confess? Bloody chicken! I wish they hadn't let the old punishments die out... God, I miss the screaming."

* Interview conducted by HPANA.
** All J.K. Rowling, TLC, and hoaxer quotes are real.