J.K. Rowling Comments On Today’s Special Date In Harry Potter History

Harry Potter’s son is on his way to Hogwarts.

Author J.K. Rowling celebrated the “real life” occasion with a tweet, writing, “Today’s the day Albus Severus Potter boards the Hogwarts Express at King’s Cross for the first time,” accompanied by the hashtag “19 years later.”

In the seventh and final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, an epilogue catches up with the boy who lived and his wife, Ginny Potter, at the start of a new school year. The couple are sending off their sons, James Sirius (named after Harry’s father and his godfather, Sirius Black) and Albus Severus (named after Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape) to Hogwarts, Albus for the first time. Also present for the departure is Lily Luna (named after Harry’s mother and close friend Luna Lovegood), not yet old enough to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (check back for that date in two years time).

For his inaugural trip on the Hogwarts Express, Albus is joined by Rose Weasley, daughter of Ron and Hermione Weasley, and Scorpius Malfoy, son of Draco and Astoria Malfoy.

Though the seventh Harry Potter novel released in 2007, the events actually occur in the nineties: the Battle of Hogwarts, which ended the second Wizarding War and saw the death (for good this time) of Lord Voldemort, took place in 1998, placing the nineteen-years-later epilogue at 2017.

Warner Bros.’ live-action Harry Potter saga released eight films between 2001 and 2011, grossing $7.7 billion at the worldwide box office. The series starred Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, and Alan Rickman. Warner Bros. revived the franchise with last year’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a series set decades before Harry Potter’s adventures at Hogwarts. That film, which stars Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Jon Voight, Ron Perlman, Alison Sudol, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller, and Johnny Depp, was scripted by series author J.K. Rowling and has a slew of future installments in the works.

2016 also saw the arrival of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a stage play scripted by Jack Thorne from an original new story co-written by Rowling. The story — which had its rehearsal script published in print as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two — was declared by Rowling to be part of the official canon, and follows Harry 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts as “an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children.” As “Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted.”

The play could serve as the basis for a new trilogy of Harry Potter films, according to a rumor from last year that stated Warner Bros. wants to reunite Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint as older versions of the iconic trio for their own Star Wars: The Force Awakens. For now, Fantastic Beasts 2 is expected to hit theaters November 16, 2018.