Nineteen years after the infamous Battle of Hogwarts, Harry Potter bid farewell to his youngest son, Albus Severus Potter, sending him off on the gleaming Hogwarts Express. When readers first took in that scene and saw the final “All was well” at the bottoms of their pages, they figured that that was it. No more books, no more Potter. Only the final movies to roll out, and then nothing.
We all should have known that wasn’t to be the case. Because, you see, JK Rowling left so many stones unturned in creating her world that there was no end to the amount of content she could produce from it. So that’s what she did, starting with actually writing the books that were referenced inside of the Harry Potter series. Two of the books commonly read by Hogwarts students, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Themand Quidditch Through the Ages, hit stores starting in 2001. Both books were written for the purpose of their proceeds benefiting the charity Comic Relief, but Rowling didn’t stop there. Copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bardhave been found on the shelves of bookstores everywhere since 2008, showing their wide publication despite minimal publicity.
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But of course, expanding the details of Harry’s world were just the beginning. For example, a freaking Harry Potter theme parkhad already opened by the time Deathly Hallows Part 2 hit theaters. But, of course, Universal Orlando’s 20-acre tribute to the world JK Rowling created could be seen solely as a monument, a money-making, physical representation of the place so many of us wanted (and, if we’re being real, still want) to visit. It was the perfect testament to the end of an era.
So then, on July 15, 2011, we all bid farewell to Harry, his friends and his family. As the Hogwarts Express rolled away and took even its trail of chimney smoke with it, tears were shed in movie theaters all across the world. Harry Potter was over, and there was nothing we could do about it.
But then, December of 2013 came around, and with it came the whispers of a stage play based on the Harry Potter books that had started development close to a year before. And the whispers grew louder once JK Rowling herself began establishing a creative team for the project in May 2014.
The year 2014 was not just about the stage play. Of course not, you see, as on March 29, 2014, the New York Times reported that one of the previously-mentioned spinoff books, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was being turned into not just one movie, but three. When the announcement trailer dropped on December 15, 2015, the world went crazy with a renewed case of Potter fever.
And finally, when the mysterious stage play was confirmed to take the name Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on June 26, 2015, exactly 18 years after the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, everyone knew for sure that the story wasn’t over. We now had promise of an 8th Harry Potter tale, which was released on July 31, 2016, the birthday of both JK Rowling and Harry Potter himself. The book release came along with the opening of the play at London’s Palace Theatre.
This creates definite proof that the world of Harry Potter can never die. With a newly-released book containing the script for the Potter-inspired play that is currently running in London, the third Wizarding World of Harry Potter several months into its operation in Universal Studios Hollywood (the second being in Japan) and the Fantastic Beasts movie set for release this coming November (not to mention the sorting opportunities for the new North American wizarding school Ilvermorny that came with it on Pottermore,) fans of the series will not be caught short of new content to consume any time soon. And even if the official stories ever stop being written, and even if there are no more movies to be made, the magic of Harry Potter will live on through its fans. Because when asked if they will still hang on to this supposedly fictional universe after all this time, the answer for any fan is simple.
"Always."
