On July 31st, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, will be released in the UAE. Why July 31st? Why it’s Harry Potter’s birthday, of course! Which we sincerely hope he won’t be spending stuck on a small island with the Dursleys and a make-shift birthday cake made of dirt. Although the “book” is merely a script version of the play that revolves around the presumably not-drab adult lives of Harry Potter and his friends and family, the excitement levels are high for its release.
To keep you tided over until the book finally gets released at 3am (!), we’ve managed to collect 10 Harry Potter facts for you which are hopefully going to leave you completely spell-bound. Or least make you go “hm” and do that little nose-exhale thing we all do when seeing things on the internet.
1.Viktor Krum only has two lines in the entire film version of The Goblet of Fire. That’s a whopping 20 words from Bulgarian Stanislav Ianevski. Easiest pay-check of his Quidditch career, we’re sure.
2. Dumbledore means “Bumblebee” in Old English. Which is rather cute actually. We couldn’t imagine any students ever being afraid of Professor Bumblebee.
3. Renowned Spanish director Guillermo del Toro turned down Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince in order to work on Hellboy II: The Golden Army instead. Now that is a combination we would have liked to see.
4. Hugh Grant was originally cast as Gilderoy Lockhart in The Chamber of Secrets but was forced to withdraw because of scheduling conflicts. Although Kenneth Brannagh was brilliant in the role, we can’t help but feel a little miffed that Grant wasn’t made the most handsome teacher Hogwarts has ever seen.
5. J.K. Rowling’s real name is Joanne. She doesn’t have a ‘K’ anywhere in her name and picked it up from her grandmother Kathleen. Yeah, Joanne Rowling doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
6. Rowling’s books were the first children’s books included on the New York Bestseller list since E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web in 1952. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
7. Professor McGonagall, in her prime, was apparently a pretty damned good Quidditch player. It’s difficult to picture old McGonagall ever being particularly active, but she could obviously hold her own on a broom back in the day.
8. There are around 700 possible fouls in the game of Quidditch. Blimey. If you thought the offside rule was complicated we’d recommend you avoid watching competitive Quidditch altogether.
9. The Harry Potter books have been translated from the original into at least 68 other languages. Hufflepuff is known ‘Poufsouffle’ in French. Adorable.
10. Michael Jackson once wanted to make a Harry Potter musical. We’re not quite sure how this one would have gone down, but we’d pay a good amount of money to see the King of Pop provide his take on J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world. We can only hope it would have ended in a Thriller-esque dance ensemble.