Ah, Fandom

This was also done for the Hoggy-Warty Xmas Fest of 2015. The prompt was a faculty trip to the 3 Broomsticks.

Well, hey, even though I tend to try not to pin fest illos to specific timelines (unless the person it is a gift for has requested an illo from a specific fic), The opportunity to use this title made it irresistable. It was only after I’d sent it off to the moderator that I realized that I’d got the date wrong. Seventh year wouldn’t have been New Year 1999. It would have been New Year 1998. But, feh, I'm not going to change the title.

So here is the Hogwarts crew in Year 7 ushering in the year 1998 at the 3 Broomsticks. One likes to hope that the faculty and staff managed to get a few good moments out of that horrible year. I like to think that Madam Rosemerta issued the invitation, and offered everyone one glass of champagne to see the new year in with (any other drinks are on the drinker’s tab).

Since this was supposed to be a 7th year illo, we don't have a full crew. Burbage was dead by then. The Carrows were carefully not informed of the gathering. Trelawney didn't want to leave her tower (and she's a solitary drinker anyway). Binns never leaves the castle. And Snape — who wasn’t invited, but knew about it all the same — was stuck back at the castle being Headmaster. He may have managed to give the Carrows some busywork that kept them occupied and away, but no one could ever be certain of that.

Admittedly, I didn't double-check as to just when during the year it was that Hagrid had to head for the hills and hide out with his brother Grawp, so I’ll just have to hope it wasn’t until after New Year. And I’ll also suppose (or pretend) that the sunset-to-sunrise caterwauling curfew which the trio encountered in May wasn't established until later in the year as well.

Coincidentally, this would also have been Tom Riddle’s 72nd birthday.

Not that anyone present gave a damn about that.

Regarding Posters

During the reveal, one of the reviewers said that she wished she could blow up one of my illustrations and print it as a poster. Given some consideration I decided that it seemed doable within reason. Most of my illos start out at 300ppi which is too big to post as an image on the internet, but large enough to export at a printable resolution in something like poster size.

So went back and I did exports of the two illos I built for that year's Hoggy-Warty Xmas Fest, as well as the one that I did for the Minerva fest a couple of months earlier. I sized them to fit on an Architectural C sheet. People were welcome to download and take it to Kinko’s or some other service bureau to get it printed. They'd need an unziping utility. They’re all compressed files, even if they don't compress very much. They're all .jpg, so most software ought to be able to handle them. I left a bit of a margin and one might have to trim some excess.

However, I never heard whether anyone ever took advantage of the offer. So I've not repeated it in this iteration of the site. If you would like me to replace it, let me know. I stil, have the files, and adding a link for download wouln’t be difficult.