New Potter stories set stage for Fantastic Beasts

British writer J.K. Rowling has written a four-part introduction to the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them, the new film due to premiere later this year. The film itself will have three parts.

The first of four stories was released on Tuesday afternoon on Pottermore, the official Harry Potter site. The first instalment of this series, called History of Magic in North America, was released on Tuesday. The series is designed to preview a new place and time within the wizarding world, enlightening readers about “a previously unexplored corner” of the universe. Wizards, writes Rowling in the first part of the series, had known about America long before non-magical humans “discovered,” wh-at they called the New World.

“Various modes of magical travel — brooms and Apparition among them — not to mention visions and premonitions, meant that even far-flung wizarding communities were in contact with each other from the Middle Ages onwar-ds.” Interestingly, the American magical community has its own term for non-magical humans. otherwise known as Muggles in Britain. The American wizards use the term No-Maj, short for “No Magic.” Rowling ventures to describe the Native American wizarding community, describing these wizards as “particularly gifted in animal and plant magic, its potions in particular being of a sophistication beyond much that was known in Europe. The most glaring difference between magic practiced by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a wand.”

The remaining stories in the four-part series will roll out at 2 pm GMT each day (7.30 pm IST). “Magic in North America will bring to light the history of this previously unexplored corner of the wizarding world in the run up to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. And you’ll want to get up to speed before the film comes around in Nove-mber,” the Pottermore announcement said. The new works add to the Harry Potter canon this years with the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It will be followed by Fantastic Beasts.