You’re really going to want to read Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon.
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1. J.K. Rowling abandoned another book that she was writing in order to start working on the Harry Potter series.
2. The series wouldn't exist without Alice Newton, the (then) 8-year-old daughter of the chairman at Bloomsbury Publishing, who read the first book before it was picked up for publishing and called it "so much better than anything else".
3. There are only 500 first edition copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in existence: around 350 hardback copies, and 150 proof copies.
4. In contrast, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had the highest initial print run in history, with 12 million copies released at midnight on July 21, 2007.
5. In 2014, a full set of first edition Harry Potter books sold at auction for £11,250.
6. The Harry Potter series is the biggest-selling book series of all time. As of 2011, it had sold more than 450 million copies.
7. According to Rowling, in the Potter-verse, there are about 3,000 wizards living in Britain.
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8. In 2006, Rowling said that "The Mirror of Erised" is her favourite chapter in the first book, and one of her favourites from the entire series.
9. She has since said that her favourite chapter in the series is "The Forest Again" from Deathly Hallows. Both chapters involve Harry interacting with the memory of his parents.
10. The character of Rubeus Hagrid was based on a Hell's Angel who J.K. Rowling met in the West Country. According to Robbie Coltrane, "he was just huge and terrifying. And then he would sit down and talk about his garden and how his petunias had been very bad that year".
11. In Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid says he bought Fluffy from "a Greek chappie" he met in the Leaky Cauldron. Three-headed dogs are prominent in Greek mythology, the most famous being Cerberus, who guards the Underworld.
12. Despite this connection to Greek mythology, in the film version Hagrid says he bought Fluffy from "an Irish fella" instead.
13. In the Harry Potter universe, a gold Galleon is worth around £4.93 ($7.35), a silver Sickle is worth around 29p ($0.46), and a bronze Knut is worth about 1p ($0.02).
14. That means that, in the first book, Harry paid £34.51 – or $51.45 – for his wand at Ollivander's.
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