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JK Rowling reveals there are 2 Harry Potters

3:13
JK Rowling Teases Release of 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' Script
Warner Bros./AP
ByJOI-MARIE MCKENZIE
June 23, 2017, 2:40 PM

— -- J.K. Rowling just released a new detail that could shake up the entire Harry Potter universe.

In a post on her Pottermore website titled "The Potter Family," the best-selling author revealed that there are two people known as Harry Potter in the wizarding world.

Before you go scratching your head, let Rowling, 51, break it down.

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On her website, she writes, the Harry Potter we know is named after his great-grandfather "Henry Potter (Harry to his intimates), who was a direct descendant of Hardwin and Iolanthe, and served on the Wizengamot from 1913–1921."

According to Rowling, the elder Harry "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.'"

In Rowling's wizarding world, the Sacred Twenty-Eight is a list of families considered pure-blood wizards in the 1930s. Muggles are ordinary, nonmagical people.

The elder Harry Potter is the father of Fleamont Potter, whose son, James Potter, went on to marry Lily Evans, a muggle-born witch. The couple's son is the second Harry Potter, the bespectacled wizard Rowling's fans have grown to know and love.

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