14 DAY TRIAL // It's a good time to be a Harry Potter fan because J. K. Rowling has just delivered on her promise to release a new story from the Harry Potter universe.
Last week, the author announced that on Halloween she was going to publish on her website dedicated to the most famous boy wizard in the world, Pottermore, a new story about the background of the evil Hogwarts professor Dolores Umbridge.
Today it has been revealed that Rowling had an ace up her sleeve and trumped the announcement by publishing five more stories, all connected to the Harry Potter world, including one which explains the founding of the wizard prison Azkaban and another that explains how wizards go about naming their children.
But the stories come with a catch. In order to be able to read them, visitors on the website must navigate the maze-like structure of the website and unlock hidden chapters by clicking on various images.
We also find out from Rowling that she based Dolores Umbridge on a real-life person, a teacher from her younger days she used to despise. She goes off at the unnamed professor by eviscerating her in her story, “[Umbridge's] desire to control, to punish, and to inflict pain, all in the name of law and order, are, I think, every bit as reprehensible as Lord Voldemort’s unvarnished espousal of evil.”
If you're a Harry Potter fan, you're definitely going to have something to do this weekend.