Harry Potter Returns In New J.K. Rowling Story
(CBS SF/AP) - Harry Potter is back, and all grown up.
J.K. Rowling has given fans a glimpse of the Boy Who Lived -- now mysterious, married and going gray -- in a new story posted Tuesday on her Pottermore website.
The 1,500-word story describes Harry, about to turn 34 (his birthday, as fans know, is July 31), attending the final of the Quidditch World Cup with his family and old friends Ron and Hermione.
READ THE ENTIRE STORY: By Rita Skeeter by way of Today or at Pottermore (Sign In Required)
It's the first update since "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" was published in 2007, but Rowling spokesman Mark Hutchinson said there are "no plans" for a new Potter novel.
Harry now has "threads of silver" in his hair and a mysterious cut on his cheekbone, related to his "top secret" work as an evil-battling Auror.
The story is written in the style of a gossip column for the Daily Prophet by reporter Rita Skeeter. The style allows Rowling to poke fun at the tabloid press, a real-life bugbear that she has accused of invading her privacy and that of her family.
Skeeter observes that Harry and friends are "no longer the fresh-faced teenagers they were in their heyday" and speculates about the state of Harry's marriage to Ginny Weasley.
She says Ron Weasley's red hair "appears to be thinning slightly," and notes witheringly that Harry still wears "the distinctive round glasses that some might say are better suited to a style-deficient 12-year-old."
The story discloses that Ron spent two years working in the Ministry of Magic but left to co-manage the family joke shop, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, while Hermione is Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and tipped to rise even higher within the Ministry.
There are also updates on other characters, including Neville Longbottom (a Herbology professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, whom Skeeter says enjoys "a little more Ogden's Old Firewhisky than most of us would expect from custodians of our children") and the "still delightfully eccentric" Luna Lovegood.
There are also glimpses of new generation of teenage wizards -- like Teddy Lupin, Harry's 16-year-old godson ("a lanky half-werewolf with bright blue hair") and Victoire Weasley, the daughter of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour.
"The good news is both of them seem to have invented a method of breathing through their ears. I can think of no other reason how they have survived such prolonged periods of what, in my young day, was called 'snogging,'" Skeeter writes of the young pair.
Rowling has long said that "Deathly Hallows," would be the last Potter novel, but has produced other Potter-related material, including spinoff story collection, "The Tales of Beedle the Bard."
Rowling has also published a novel for adults, "The Casual Vacancy," and two detective thrillers under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
You May Also Be Interested In These Stories