Rowling reveals Potter at age 34

It caused quite a stir at the 2014 Quidditch World Cup when Harry Potter showed up.

The fictional world championship of the fictional sport invented by J.K. Rowling for her beloved series is unfolding in Rowling’s imagination this month in Patagonia, and on her “Pottermore” website (registration required).

“As the crowd stampeded, tents were flattened and small children mown down,” Rowling wrote in the voice of “Rita Skeeter,” reporter for the newspaper of the wizarding world, The Daily Prophet. Fans were “desperate above all else for a glimpse of the man they still call the Chosen One.”

Rowling wrote her first dispatch from Patagonia this April, in the voice of Potter’s wife, Ginny Weasley. On Tuesday, Harry himself was back. In the last Harry Potter book (published in 2007), Harry was a teenager. Now he is 34 with “threads of silver” in his black hair, but still sporting “the distinctive round glasses that some might say are better suited to a style-deficient twelve-year-old,” as Skeeter writes.

Skeeter’s dispatch proceeds in that snarky (jealous?) tone for 1,500 words, commenting on the reunion in the Potter tent of the famous Dumbledore’s Army, including Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. And Rowling can’t help but drop in a small detail that could serve as the premise for another series of “Harry Potter” books.

Harry Potter, in addition to the famous lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, is sporting a new scar on his cheek. Skeeter wrote that her attempts to discover the source of the mysterious cut were rebuffed by the Ministry of Magic. “So what are they hiding?” Skeeter writes. “Is the Chosen One embroiled in fresh mysteries that will one day explode upon us all, plunging us into a new age of terror and mayhem?”

Rowling has shared Skeeter’s latest dispatch with the “Today” show website, where it can be read without having to register.