Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Harry Potter grows up in a new original play, 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.' As Leigh Scheps (@LeighTVReporter) explains, it's the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. Buzz60 
 
 Daniel Radcliffe in 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2.' (Photo: Jaap Buitendijk, Warner Bros. Pictures) 
 
 Harry Potter is about to get a little Cursed. 
 
 The upcoming play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which J.K. Rowling announced in June, will follow an adult Harry and his youngest son, Albus, making it officially the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first to be told onstage. The play, running next summer at the Palace Theater in London, is in two parts due to the "epic nature of the story," Rowling said on her Pottermore site. 
 
 So now you know it really isn't a prequel: Harry Potter & the #CursedChild starts #19yearslater! Go to @HPPlayLDN for more information. — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 23, 2015 
 
 "19 years later" is significant to Potter fans. The epilogue to the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, takes place 19 years after the events of the book, and sees Harry, along with his friends Ron and Hermione, dropping their children off at the Hogwarts Express. 
 
 The play also debuted its official artwork, which features a child hunched inside a nest that appears to have black wings. 
 
 Sneak peek! See our brand new artwork for Harry Potter and the #CursedChild! pic.twitter.com/wEaPOELgvF — Harry Potter Play (@HPPlayLDN) October 22, 2015 
 
 Fans may speculate that the boy in the image is Albus, but it was not made clear whether the youngest Potter is in fact the titular cursed child. Here's the official synopsis, via Pottermore: 
 
 It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places. 
 
 Rowling also revealed that Cursed Child will feature a company of over 30 actors, but casting will be announced at a later date. 
 
 Tickets for the play go on sale at 11am GMT on Wed. Oct. 28 to those who have registered for priority booking, and 11am GMT on Friday Oc. 30 for the general public (full ticketing information is available here). 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1LRnjFc ||||| Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the official eighth Potter story and the first to be presented on stage. 
 
 It’s official. The Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and we have the synopsis to share with you: 
 
 It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places. 
 
 When we last saw Harry he was waving off his eldest children, James Sirius and Albus Severus, at platform nine and three-quarters. This next exciting chapter in the story will explore Harry’s life after that moment for the very first time. 
 
 Written by Jack Thorne and directed by Olivier and Tony award-winner John Tiffany, the play is a brand new story written in collaboration with J.K. Rowling. 
 
 The play is in two parts, due to the ‘epic nature of the story’, and will feature a cast of more than 30 actors, to be announced later. 
 
 J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany say: ‘It is very exciting to explore Harry’s world in a brand new way through the live form of theatre. Collaborating on this story is exhilarating for all of us and we can’t wait to present the eighth story at the Palace Theatre next summer.’ 
 
 ‘The story only exists because the right group of people came together with a brilliant idea about how to present Harry Potter on stage,’ continues J.K. Rowling. ‘I’m confident that when audiences see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child they will understand why we chose to tell this story in this way.’ 
 
 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child comes to London’s West End summer 2016. ||||| The first part of Rowling’s new online series History of Magic in North America sheds light on Native American magic – and expands the Harry Potter universe across the pond 
 
 Harry Potter author JK Rowling has published her first expansion of the magical universe she created in the bestselling fantasy book series she began 20 years ago: History of Magic in North America, a series of short stories telling the magical history of America. 
 
 The first part that launched today, titled Fourteenth Century – Seventeenth Century, reads like an extract from an academic tome and tells the story of how wizards communicated with North America before it was colonised by non-magical humans, or ‘No-Maj’, a term revealed by Rowling recently as an American slang equivalent to the British term ‘Muggle’ used in the Harry Potter books. 
 
 Magical travel meant that even far-flung wizarding communities were in contact with each other from the Middle Ages JK Rowling 
 
 Rowling writes that “the Native American magical community and those of Europe and Africa had known about each other long before the immigration of European No-Majs in the seventeenth century” and that the proportion of magic folk in the population is consistent all over the world. Rowling then focuses on Native American magic, writing that wizards in Native American tribes were “accepted and even lauded” by their people, for their skills in healing and hunting. 
 
 The author weaves in some of her existing lore into the new story, using her term from the Harry Potter books, ‘Animagi’ – wizards and witches who can turn into animals at will – to explain the use of magic amongst Native American tribes. Rowling refers to ‘skin walkers’, an actual myth of the Navajo people, where individuals gain the ability to transform into animals at night, usually after killing a family member. Rowling writes that these individuals were usually Animagi who did not use sacrifices to gain their powers, but “assumed animal forms to escape persecution or to hunt for the tribe. Such derogatory rumours often originated with No-Maj medicine men, who were sometimes faking magical powers themselves, and fearful of exposure.” 
 
 What, no muggles? JK Rowling fans aghast at new term for non-wizards Read more 
 
 Rowling also explains that Native American wizards are better at making potions than European wizards, but do not use wands like their counterparts across the world. 
 
 “The magic wand originated in Europe. Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality,” Rowling writes, “As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and Transfiguration are very difficult without one.” 
 
 The series of stories coming this week are connected to the upcoming cinematic expansion of the Harry Potter universe: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a trilogy of films set in 1920s New York, 70 years before the Harry Potter books begin. The films will tell the story of Newt Scamander, a expert in magical animals – or ‘magizoologist’ – and author of a textbook Potter himself finds on his recommended reading list in his first year at Hogwarts. The first film, which stars Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as Scamander and was written by Rowling herself, will be released worldwide in November 2016. 
 
 Despite a spate of announcements putting Rowling back in the Harry Potter universe – the author recently announced she was helping with the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, an “eighth Harry Potter story” that will continue Potter’s story when he is middle-aged, and the film Fantastic Beasts, which she wrote the screenplay for – History of Magic in North America is the first expansion of the canon and her first depiction of the magical community in North America. 
 
 History of Magic in North America by JK Rowling – review Read more 
 
 Today’s 400-word story is the first of four new stories building the history magical America published on Pottermore each day this week. Rowling has previously dabbled in building on the existing Harry Potter universe with short stories, starting the website Pottermore as a home to tidbits of information about what happened to the characters before and after the series was set, including Quidditch – a magical sport – match reports penned by Harry’s wife Ginny Weasley. In 2014, Pottermore crashed when fans flooded to the site to read a new story about Harry and his friends, written in the style of a tabloid news article.
– JK Rowling announced back in June that Harry Potter was coming to the London stage, but until now, there was much speculation the stage play's plot would be a prequel to the books. Rowling debunked that today: "So now you know it really isn't a prequel," she tweeted. "Harry Potter & the #CursedChild starts #19yearslater!" Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opens at the Palace Theater in the summer of 2016, and tickets go on sale next week, USA Today reports. Rowling's site Pottermore has more details on the plot, which involves Potter and his youngest son, Albus Severus. "It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children," reads the official synopsis. "While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places." The play's official Twitter account has artwork and more info. (Albus' older brother, James Sirius, started at Hogwarts last month.)