Author JK Rowling on Thursday revealed that there were two Harry Potters in the fictional wizarding world. In her latest post on Pottermore, the digital publishing and news company she owns, Rowling revealed Harry’s ancestry and said he was not the first Harry Potter.
The Harry that the world knows had a great grandfather named Henry Potter who was known as Harry to friends. Henry/Harry served on the high wizard court of law Wizengamot from 1913 to 1921. Like his great grandson, he had stood up for the rights of Muggles, the term used to describe non-magic folks in the Harry Potter universe.
“Henry Potter [Harry to his intimates], was a direct descendant of Hardwin and Iolanthe...[He] caused a minor stir when he publicly condemned then Minister for Magic Archer Evermonde, who had forbidden the magical community to help Muggles waging the First World War. His outspokenness on the behalf of the Muggle community was also a strong contributing factor in the family’s exclusion from the ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight’,” Rowling explained on Pottermore.
Henry had a son named Fleamont, who went on to marry Euphemia and have their son James, Harry’s father. Neither Fleamot nor Euphemia ever got to meet Harry.
“Fleamont and Euphemia lived long enough to see James marry a Muggle-born girl called Lily Evans, but not to meet their grandson Harry,” Rowling wrote. “Dragon pox carried them off within days of each other, due to their advanced age, and James Potter then inherited Ignotus Peverell’s Invisibility Cloak.”
Rowling’s post comes a few days before the 20th anniversary of the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first of seven books in the series and the eight-movie franchise, on June 26.
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