There's a lot to chew on from JK Rowling's new short story about Ilvermorny, the American wizarding school, but one thing stands out as a weird mystery.

Near the end of the story, Rowling writes about what happens to Salazar Slytherin's wand. Isolt, the story's main character, is a descendant of Slytherin, who is also one of the founders of Hogwarts. The wand is a family heirloom and Isolt steals it when she escapes her evil aunt in Europe to live in America.

Isolt's aunt eventually pursues her and "deactivates" the wand by speaking Parseltongue, the language of snakes. The wand is imbued with the horn of a basilisk, a type of magical snake, so it apparently takes Parseltongue commands.

What happens to the wand after that? Rowling gives it a curious epilogue in two paragraphs under the heading "Slytherin’s Legacy":

Slytherin’s wand remained inactive following Gormlaith’s command in Parseltongue. Isolt could not speak the language, but, in any case, she no longer wanted to touch the wand that was the last relic of her unhappy childhood. She and James buried it outside the grounds.

Within a year an unknown species of snakewood tree had grown out of the earth on the spot where the wand was buried. It resisted all attempts to prune or kill it, but after several years the leaves were found to contain powerful medicinal properties. This tree seemed testament to the fact that Slytherin’s wand, like his scattered descendants, encompassed both noble and ignoble. The very best of him seemed to have migrated to America. 

This is weird.

So the wand of Salazar Slytherin, one of the most powerful wizards of all time, turns into a tree? This raises a lot of questions:

1. Is the wand still intact, or is it usable? If you dig underneath the tree, will the wand still be there? Or has it entirely turned into a tree?
2. The basilisk is famously deadly: it instantly kills anyone who looks into its eyes and its venom is nearly incurable. What possible medicinal properties can come from the tree? Would they counteract basilisk venom?
3. Ilvermorny's Pukwudgie house is known to "favour healers," but not a lot about that is known just yet. Are the medicinal properties of the tree related to the Pukwudgie house?
4. What would happen if someone spoke Parseltongue to the tree?
5. When the story ends, all the Parseltongue speakers, as far as we know, are in Europe. Will "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," which takes place about 300 years later, introduce another Parseltongue speaker to America, who will find out if the tree responds to Parseltongue?
6. Hogwarts also has an iconic tree on its grounds: the Whomping Willow. Is this a trend among all magical school campuses?
7. A tree figures prominently in Ilvermorny's iconography, according to a Pottermore video. Is it the same tree as the Slytherin one?

It's strange. The very existence of the tree suggests unfinished business. There are just too many questions surrounding it. And, unlike much of the rest of the story, the fate of this particular element doesn't close quite neatly.

Rowling says the tree is Slytherin's "legacy"— that he had elements of both evil and good, and the tree embodies that. She concludes with the same lesson by the end of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," where Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape turn out to be morally complicated characters.

The story overall also serves as a precursor to "Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them," the movie about an English wizard in America, due for release in November and set around 300 years after the Ilvermorny story.

So will Newt Scamander, the star of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," visit Slytherin's tree? With his knowledge of magical animals, will he be able to figure out how the basilisk plays into this?

Hopefully, we'll find out in November.

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"Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe continues his diverse departure from the world of wizardry in "Imperium," a story inspired by true events wherein a young FBI agent infiltrates a group of white supremacists bent on committing acts of terrorism.

Radcliffe recently played the role of a farting corpse in the critically-acclaimed fantasy "Swiss Army Man." 

"Imperium" is scheduled to be released on August 19.

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There are two Hermiones — and no, it's not because of polyjuice potion.

Emma Watson, who famously played the brilliant witch in the "Harry Potter" film series, went to a showing of the new play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" on Wednesday, and shared a moment with the actress playing an older version of her character, Noma Dumezweni.

"Yesterday I went to see the 'Cursed Child,'" Watson wrote in a Facebook post. "I came in with no idea what to expect and it was AMAZING. Some things about the play were, I think, possibly even more beautiful than the films."

"Having seen it I felt more connected to Hermione and the stories than I have since Deathly Hallows came out, which was such a gift," she continued. "Meeting Noma and seeing her on stage was like meeting my older self and have her tell me everything was going to be alright, which as you can imagine was immensely comforting (and emotional)! The cast and crew welcomed me like I was family and Noma was everything I could ever hope she would be. She's wonderful."

The decision to cast a black actress to play Hermione in the play was met with some racist objections, but Watson and author J.K. Rowling — who also wrote the play — have shut them down handedly. 

"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" official opens on July 30, and the script is being released as a book the following day. Spoilers have already leaked, despite Rowling's best efforts. 

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Few people get the privilege of playing the memorable and inspiring "Harry Potter" character that is Hermione Granger. But Thursday evening, two of the women who have taken on the role finally got to meet. 

Five years after the final "Harry Potter" film debuted, fans entered the wizarding world of Harry Potter once again with "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," a play on the London stage. 

The play features all the same characters from the movies and book, and picks up right where the final installment in the series left off, 19 years in the future. But of course, the actors in the play are different than those in the films, and on Thursday evening, movie and stage collided when Emma Watson and Noma Dumezweni, the two actresses who play Hermione Granger, met for the first time. 

Dumezweni tweeted that Watson had been in the audience that night and she had seen the play. On Twitter, she wrote: "Now I feel I can share the maHUSSIVE Joy I felt, alongside the company when a beautiful, humble, and very kind young lady saw @HPPlayLDN."

Watson tweeted about their meeting as well.

Fans responded immediately to the photos, and they were just as excited as Watson and Dumezweni. 

Some fans were so excited that they seemed to have had a hard time typing out entire thoughts.

Watson enchanted "Harry Potter" fans for 10 years playing Hermione Granger on the big screen. When the casting was announced for the stage production, a charged conversation emerged about Hermione being portrayed by a black woman.

Watson and J.K. Rowling, the creator of the series, expressed complete support for Dumezweni.

Watson also hung out backstage with other cast members of the play Thursday evening, including Anthony Boyle, who plays Scorpius Malfoy, and Sam Clemmentt, who plays Albus Potter. 

Whether or not other actors from the films are planning to see the play and meet their on-stage counterparts is unclear, but we'll keep you updated. 

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No "Harry Potter" movie is complete without a good flying scene, and most of those happened on broomsticks.

To shoot the scenes for Quidditch — a sport where people fly around on broomsticks and try to score goals against the opposing team by throwing, catching, and blocking various types of balls — the production team for the Harry Potter movies had a few tricks up their sleeve.

The filming methods were different depending on the scene. One of them involves jumping up and down on a trampoline in front of a green screen.

You can see Rupert Grint (AKA Ron Weasley) showing us how to do it in this old behind-the-scenes special for "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" at 14:10.

 "You go about 30 foot in the air," Grint said. "I was holding a broom and they were throwing balls at me. It's quite scary."

Another way they got actors to look like they're zooming around on brooms is with a really tall rig. There's a broom on top of a robot that moves around. Along with some artificial wind and a green screen, they could be made to look like they're flying.

It's really complicated. Every actor is filmed seperately, so even if they appear to be talking to each other in the scene, they're probably not in real life. A computer program determines where the broom rig moves, so even though it looks like the actors are steering it, they're acually just trying to hold on. The actors are up there for hours, and the brooms, as you can imagine, get uncomfortable.

And because the shots are made to look like they're thousands of feet in the air, the lighting gets complicated. Everyone is shot at multiple angles for the scenes. So when they're stitched together, they need to be controlled for various lighting angles that work for each person in the frame. Plus, the special effects artists need to create a digital environment and atmosphere that all looks cohesive.

Warner Bros made a video where the special effects team explains how it's done. It's worth a look:

Green screen special effects methods can be fun. Take this scene, for example, where Hermione holds up books to the Hogwarts library bookshelves and they float back into place:

In reality, there were people on the other side of the shelves wearing green gloves:

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Some of the relationships in the "Harry Potter" series seem questionable. Ron and Hermione? Really? Could Harry and Ginny be more awkward together? Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbott? Sure, I guess.

Luckily, real life has served us better. Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood in the films, has been dating Robbie Jarvis, who played James Potter, Harry Potter's dad, in flashback scenes from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."They have been dating for at least a couple of years. And they are adorable.

Like normal people, the two are chronicling their relationshipon Instagram.

They love hanging out with Lynch's cat, Puff.

They send cute texts to each other.

They chill with Jeff Goldblum.

And they're even fans of other fantasy series. Here's a painting of them as "Avatar: The Last Airbender" characters.

It's too cute.

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The first public showings of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" play, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," aren't until the end of the month, but could a "Cursed Child" movie be on the horizon?

Maybe!

First spotted by Trademark lawyer Brian Conroy, Warner Bros. Entertainment filed a trademark on July 8 for "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." That wouldn't be so interesting considering that the play is coming out this month; however, among other things, the trademark filing is for a "Cursed Child" movie.

Here's the full filing, which you can read on the UK's intellectual property office site here.

In addition to rights for a movie, Warner Bros. also asked for trademarks on items ranging from knives and cutlery to games, jewelry, calendars, and even cookies and crackers. Mmm. Harry Potter cookies. As silly as some of the things may sound, it's pretty standard stuff.

Before you get too hyped by the idea of a "Cursed Child" movie, "Harry Potter" creator J.K. Rowling told fans back in February that "Cursed Child" would be a play, not a film.

But Warner Bros. could seriously use some box-office magic at the moment.

Out of the film's 10 releases so far this year, only two movies have grossed over $250 million — and one of those is "Batman v Superman." Even that film, featuring two of the most popular superhero titans in the world, underwhelmed. While $872 million at the box office is a lot of money, that should have been an instant billion-dollar film. (The two final “Dark Knight” movies made over$1 billion at theaters without the help of Superman.)

San Diego Comic-Con is next week and WB is expected to drop some new info on its first "Harry Potter" spinoff, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." It would be a great time to also deliver even more "Harry Potter" news. Keep your fingers crossed!

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J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" universe has come a long way since "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was released way back in 1997.

Right now, there are ten books, eight movies, and one play — and it's getting even more complicated.

By the end of 2016, we'll have two new books and a movie. There's also been a steady stream of new stories coming out of Pottermore.

To help you out, here's a handy guide to all the material in the Harry Potter universe. The release years are included to give you an idea of how everything unfolded.

The books:

There are ten books in the Harry Potter series: seven main story arcs, and three shorter, supplementary ones. Here are the main ones, which tell Harry's story:

1. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (1997, published as "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in the UK)
2. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (1998)
3. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (1999)
4. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (2000)
5. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (2003)
6. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (2005)
7. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (2007)

And then there are the three supplementary books. They fill out more of the Harry Potter universe, but they're not, strictly speaking, essential to read for you to understand the story. Rowling actually gave all of their proceeds to charity. Here's what they are:

1. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (2001) — A book written by Rowling under the pseudonym Newt Scamander. In the series itself, the book is a textbook for Harry's Care of Magical Creatures class in his third year at Hogwarts, assigned by Hagrid. The same title is being used for a movie and script written by Rowling, due later this year. We'll talk more about that in a bit.
2. "Quidditch Through the Ages" (2001) — Also a book written by Rowling, under the pseudonym Kennilworthy Whisp, with a foreword "written" by Albus Dumbledore. The book appears several times in the Harry Potter series proper. It's a history of the magical sport of Quidditch.
3. "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" (2008) — A story book, annotated by "Dumbledore" (but written by Rowling), of five fairy tale-like short stories by Beedle the Bard, who's kind of like the magical world's Brothers Grimm. The book plays an important role in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," giving clues to the nature of the three magical "hallows," objects that Harry seems to need to defeat Voldemort.

Those are the ten books that are already released. We know for sure that we're getting two more Harry Potter books later this year. Here they are:

1. "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — Parts One & Two" (July 31, 2016) — A book version of a new play written by Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany. The story takes place 19 years after the events of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." It centers on Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but the actors in the stage version aren't the ones from the movie.
2. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay" (November 19, 2016) — The screenplay for the movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," which will be released a day earlier. The story is about Newt Scamander, who's the author of the book with the same title in the original Harry Potter series, getting into trouble in New York. It takes place several decades before the events of the main Harry Potter story.

The movies:

The eight Potter movies that have been released so far are based on the books. There's one for each book, released between 2001 and 2011, with the exception of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which was split into two movies. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" were released in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

Next, we'll get a trilogy of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" movies. The release dates are subject to change, and the two sequels don't have finalized titles yet. There's also a chance we'll get a "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" movie down the road.

1. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (November 18, 2016) — The movie will be about Newt Scamander, a British wizard played by Eddie Redmayne who arrives in New York around the year 1920.
2. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Part 2 (2018)
3. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Part 3 (2020)

Miscellaneous:

Complicating the Harry Potter canon even more are the bits and pieces of material Rowling has released over the years. Here's how it breaks down:

• Harry Potter prequel short story — In 2008, Rowling wrote and sold to charity an 800-word short story that takes place before the series' events. It's about a confrontation between muggle (read: non-magical) police officers and Sirius Black and James Potter, Harry's dad.
• Pottermore — Since 2011, Rowling has published some work on Pottermore, a Harry Potter-centric website. There's all sorts of stuff there. It has everything from background information on the Malfoy Family, to an illuminating profile of Professor Minerva McGonagall, to a 5,000-word short story about American wizardry. You can also do things like take a quiz to get sorted into a Hogwarts or Ilvermorny house.

Other J.K. Rowling works:

That sums up pretty much everything written by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter universe. But if you're a Rowling completist, she's written four non-Potter books worth seeking out.

After "Deathly Hallows," she released "A Casual Vacancy" in 2012. It's a non-magical novel about the politics and relationships of a couple of towns in the English countryside. It was later adapted into a pretty solid miniseries.

Under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, Rowling is writing the "Cormoran Strike" series, another non-fantasy story. They're about a detective by the same name who solves mysteries and struggles with romance in London.

There are three of those books out right now, published each year between 2013 and 2015: "The Cuckoo's Calling,""The Silkworm," and "Career of Evil." Rowling said she plans to write more Cormoran Strike books than Harry Potter books, but they haven't quite taken hold of the public imagination in the same way.

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Two Oregon parents and their adorable sons just raised the bar for newborn photo shoots. 

Oregon parents Katherine and Jesse Oldfield are Harry Potter superfans who spent their first Halloween together dressed as Harry and Hermione, BuzzFeed reports. So when they decided to schedule a newborn portrait session for their second child, Theodore, they knew it had to be Potter-related. 

They teamed up with photographer Kelsey Clouse of Lune de la Rogue Photography to develop the concept. Sebastian is dressed as series protagonist Harry Potter, complete with tiny Gryffindor tie. Newborn Theodore is dressed like a Mandrake — the screaming plant-baby hybrid that Harry and his friends encounter in herbology class during their second year at Hogwarts. (Here's how the creatures look and sound in the movie.)

"Our photographer Kelsey tagged me in a mandrake picture on Facebook and immediately the wheels started turning," mom Katherine told BuzzFeed. "I knew it was key that Theodore be crying for the shot. Luckily, babies tend to do that."

Here's a peek at some more images from the shoot: 

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Only the most hardcore Harry Potter fans will remember "The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore," a biography of the Hogwarts headmaster mentioned in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

For J.K. Rowling, it was essential.

In the plot of the Harry Potter series, the book is relatively unimportant. It's a critical hit piece on Albus Dumbledore, written by gossip reporter Rita Skeeter three weeks after his death. It's a best-seller in the Harry Potter universe, turning the author from a merely a gadfly to becoming one of the series' bad guys.

In the movies, "The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore" pops up in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1." Hermione grabs a copy to learn more about about Dumbledore's past, leading her, Harry, and Ron to information that eventually helps them defeat Voldemort.

Even though it's there just in passing, Rowling paid close attention to the look and feel of the prop. According to The Wall Street Journal, she wanted the cover "to look like a trashy airport novel." Which is perfect. In the movies, the book does look exactly like an overwritten, disreputable biography that's been dashed off by a gossip columnist in just three weeks. The design also looks a lot like some of the other books and newspapers in the Harry Potter universe, with the overwrought lettering in the title and the framing of Michael Gambon's face on the cover.

This kind of insane attention to detail is very much in character for Rowling.

“She knows exactly what she’s doing and what she wants,” says Miraphora Mina, the co-owner of  Mina Lima, a props company that Rowling works with frequently.

Lately, Rowling has been expanding that detail-oriented style into new endeavors.

Since Rowling wrapped up the "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" book in 2007, she's increasingly put her own stamp on her fantasy empire.

She's worked on Pottermore, an interactive website where people can learn more about the characters and minutiae in the Harry Potter universe. She has a new play, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," about what happens to Harry, Ron, and Hermione 19 years after the books. And she's writing the scripts for a trilogy of movies in the Harry Potter universe herself, instead of handing off script-writing duties to another writer, as she did for the Harry Potter series.

And on a business level, she's putting her stamp on everything as well. She got special deals with Apple and Amazon for Harry Potter ebook and audiobooks. She's orchestrating the rollout of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." And she's closely involved in merchandising decisions. It's very much like what George Lucas did for "Star Wars," except Rowling is actually good.

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Who can forget the scene from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when Professor Snape sensed someone was nearby, reached out his hand to grab them, and narrowly missed Harry Potter under his invisibility cloak? Fans across the world immediately wanted their own such garment with which to cause mischief.

Apparently, some of those fans were scientists who never gave up on their dream to possess a working invisibility cloak. While the technology may not be there quite yet, those working on the project announced that they have made real progress towards it, according to Queen Mary University of London.

For the first time, researchers from QMUL’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science demonstrated a practical cloaking device “that allows curved surfaces to appear flat to electromagnetic waves,” according to the university. The researchers used a nanocomposite medium to coat a curved surface about the size of a tennis ball.

The nanocomposite medium has several layers with varying electric properties, depending on their position. They effectively make the rounded shape appear flat under certain frequencies. In the past, the method was only effective using one frequency, but the recent demonstrations showed it is now capable of cloaking objects in a greater range of frequencies. This technology has numerous uses in other engineering applications, such as nano-antennas and in aerospace tech.

In the announcement, project co-author Professor Yang Hao said, “The design is based on transformation optics, a concept behind the idea of the invisibility cloak.” So while fans should not plan to race out and line up for their very own invisibility cloak, this recent development shows significant progress on the project. This is yet another example where fiction inspires real science.

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Making the magic of the "Harry Potter" movie series required a lot of green screens. And, in at least one case, green gloves.

Let's look at this scene from "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth movie. While Hermione is chatting with Harry, she's also replacing books on their shelves in the Hogwarts library. Instead of placing them directly on the shelves, the books float back into their place and slot neatly on the shelves on their own.

How'd they do it? The books themselves aren't animated; they're totally real. Instead, it looks like there were people standing on the other side of the shelves with green gloves, which were blended into the background during editing.

It's a big jump from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," where Harry had to fumble around with books in the library's restricted section in his search for information about Nicolas Flamel.

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As great as it would be if "Harry Potter" was real, J.K. Rowling made sure the series was distinct from real life. There aren't any specific, real-life people who show up in the books.

There's just one exception: Nicolas Flamel.

In "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Flamel is the magician who created the Philosopher's Stone. The stone has several magical properties: it can turn ordinary metal into gold and it produces the Elixir of Life, which makes the drinker immortal. Naturally, Voldemort was after it.

In real life, Flamel was a French scholar and bookseller who lived in the 14th and early 15th centuries. After his death, he got a reputation as an alchemist who discovered the Philosopher's Stone and secretly achieved immortality. Several pseudepigraphical texts about alchemy were attributed to him, so he gained fame as an important figure in alchemy circles.

J.K. Rowling noted on Pottermore that she read about Flamel in her 20s, and incorporated a version of his story in the Harry Potter series. She dreamt about him while writing her first book:

"I remember having a highly detailed and exceptionally vivid dream about Flamel, several months into the writing of Philosopher's Stone, which was like a Renaissance painting come to life. Flamel was leading me around his cluttered laboratory, which was bathed in golden light, and showing me exactly how to make the Stone (I wish I could remember how to do it)."

Rowling's version of Flamel graduated from Beauxbatons, a wizarding school in southwest Europe where he also met his wife. The fictional Flamel was rumored to be a major patron of the school later in life, which syncs up with his real-life reputation as a wealthy businessman and philanthropist.

When Harry was in his first year at Hogwarts, in 1991, fictional Flamel was 665 years old. This would also fit with his real-life age; he was born around 1330.

To be sure, Rowling writes about interactions between the magical and muggle worlds in her books. The British Prime Minister chats with the Minister of Magic on occasion, and wizards live among muggles. But for the most part, details are purposefully scarce, and major historical events in the muggle world are only alluded to. Flamel is the exception. He isn't only given a name, but he's a proper character in the series. 

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"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling has made it clear that she thinks Donald Trump is worse than her villain Voldemort, so she would probably be glad to hear her readers think so too.

A new study from a University of Pennsylvania professor found that those who have read about the famous boy wizard have an unfavorable view of the Republican presidential nominee.

It only gets worse for The Donald because opinions drop even more if people have read all seven books.

The study, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Donald," was written by Diana Mutz, a professor of political science and communication. It will appear in a special 2016 election issue of "PS: Political Science and Politics."

Mutz polled a nationally representative sample of 1,142 Americans in 2014 and again in 2016 and asked them, among other things, to rank their feelings toward Trump on a 0 to 100 scale. The study found that each "Harry Potter" book read lowered participants' thoughts on Trump by about two to three points.

The study noted that party affiliation did not affect whether a person had read the "Harry Potter" novels.

"Because Trump's political views are widely viewed as opposed to the values espoused in the 'Harry Potter' series, exposure to the Potter series may play an influential role in influencing how Americans respond to Donald Trump," Mutz wrote in the study.

For example, Harry Potter and his cohorts are against the enslavement of house elves and privilege given to pure blood wizards, while Trump has made comments that some minority groups find racist and offensive.

The study also collected data about the "Harry Potter" movies but said they do not predict opinions on Trump. It's not clear why not, but the study speculates it may be because Republicans were less likely to watch the films than Democrats, and because the books delve more into characters' dispositions than the movies.

"Throughout the series, love and kindness consistently triumph over aggression and prejudice. It's a powerful positive theme, and thus not surprising that readers understand the underlying message of this storyline, and are moved by it," Mutz said. "Harry Potter's popularity worldwide stands to make a difference not just in the U.S. election, but in elections across Europe that involve aggressive and domineering candidates worldwide."

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J.K. Rowling mostly kept her hands off the "Harry Potter" movies. She already said everything in the books.

She played close attention to certain details, and the filmmakers sought her approval, but for the most part, she left the people in charge of translating her magical world to film alone. They had thousands of pages of source material to work from.

"She was really happy to let everyone interpret them in their own way, and for each department," Miraphora Mina told INSIDER. Mina co-founded MinaLima, the graphic design firm that designed everything in the "Harry Potter" movies from Harry's Hogwarts' envelope to Voldemort's Horcruxes.

There was one part where Mina needed J.K. Rowling's help: The Black family tree.

The tree is in 12 Grimmauld Place, a magically disguised hideout in London where Harry first stays at the beginning of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." It's also the ancestral home of the Black family, of which Sirius Black, Harry's godfather, was a member. Most of the family was obsessed with their pure-blooded status (meaning they didn't have many muggles in the family), and they had an elaborate family tree on a tapestry to celebrate it. Sirius was erased from the tree when he ran away from home as a child.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" doesn't say too much about what's on the tree itself, although it does describe the tapestry:

The tapestry looked immensely old; it was faded and looked as though doxies had gnawed it in places; nevertheless, the golden thread with which it was embroidered still glinted brightly enough to show them a sprawling family tree dating back (as far as Harry could tell) to the Middle Ages.

Instead of appearing as a tapestry taking up a single wall, it appears in the movie as a wallpaper occupying an entire room. But Mina and her work partner, Eduardo Lima, didn't know what to put on it. Neither the book or script had the details.

"It says 'there is a family tree,'" Mina said. "But our job as graphic designers is to present the whole thing, and we didn’t know who was related to who."

So they asked Rowling for help, and she provided an elaborate diagram of everyone's relationship with each other. And just like that, new information entered the "Harry Potter" canon. It not only accurately included the minute details of the tree from the books (like of Alphard Black being blacked out for taking Sirius in), it also added several generations of previously unknown Black family members.

It isn't the only time Rowling weighed in on designs in the "Harry Potter" movies, but in general, Mina said she was "generous and approving" of her own designs.

"I think she loved it all. It must have been strange for her to see it realized in material form," she said. "She even took a couple of books away, that we’ve made ... It’s the ultimate compliment."

In the forthcoming "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" movies, Rowling will have more involvement than she did in the "Harry Potter" ones. For one, Rowling wrote the script herself this time. She'll have control over every detail of the magical universe from the start.

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If you're wondering what it could be like to study at Hogwarts, consider heading over to the Sainte-Geneviève Library.

Located in Paris, France, the century-old library features a reading room that resembles the one described in "Harry Potter." 

Dozens of long tables line the massive space, with sunlight pouring in through 46 tall windows. Decorative cast iron arches support the ceiling.

Designed by French architect Henri Labrouste, the 19,000-square-foot building dates back to 1851. Its use of blatantly exposed iron arches was groundbreaking at the time.

The library inherited its original collection — around 16,000 books and documents — from St. Genevieve, one of the largest and oldest abbeys in Paris.

Today, it contains over 2 million items, some dating back to the sixth century. Who knows — "Harry Potter" might even be sitting on a shelf.

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Stephanie Meyer is making a career change.

After writing seven "Twilight" books in the past decade, she's ready to move on. "The Chemist,"to be released this November, will be her first novel not written for teenage girls. There won't be a vampire in sight.

The novel doesn't look very interesting. It's about a former secret agent on the run from the government. What is interesting is her publisher: Little, Brown and Company.

Little Brown (as it's referred to in the industry) is the publishing house J.K. Rowling chose for her first post-Potter book, "The Casual Vacancy." She trusted them to handle an image change: Rowling wanted to be seen as a writer for adults, and to do so at the same place that published Norman Mailer and David Foster Wallace.

Meyer's "Twilight" series was also published by Little Brown. But instead of moving publishers, Meyer is sticking with them and trusting them to handle an image makeover, just like they did with Rowling. Instead of the cover of "The Chemist" advertising her as "The author of 'Twilight,'" it says she's the bestselling author of "The Host," the only non-"Twilight" book Meyer wrote.

Since wrapping up the "Harry Potter" series, Rowling's image is still inextricably tied to the "Harry Potter" franchise. And she's fine with that. In fact, she's expanding it. But Rowling now has a reputation as an imaginative woman responsible for "The Casual Vacancy," the Cormoran Strike novels, and tweeting about British politics.

Likewise, Stephanie Meyer will forever be known for "Twilight." But Little Brown might help her become known for more.

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The upcoming "Harry Potter" film "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" keeps looking better and better.

Ahead of the panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Warner Bros. released a new poster for the film on the "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" Twitter account.

It stars Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as magizoologist Newt Scamander. In the background, 1920s New York City rises around him and the emblem for the Magical Congress of the United States sits above his head. There’s even a little animal trying to get out of his magical suitcase.

What’s even more interesting are the snapshots of his fellow stars on the side. On the left hand column are Katherine Waterston as a MACUSA employee (and potential love interest) named Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein, Dan Fogler as the bumbling No-Maj Jacob Kowalski, and Samantha Morton as the scary Mary Lou, who we know is the leader of a group called the Second Salemers.

On the right hand side is Colin Farrell as the auror Graves, Alison Sudol as Tina's sister Queenie Goldstein, and finally Ezra Miller as Credence, Mary Lou’s adopted son.

As Entertainment Weekly points out, this is the first time fans are seeing Mary Lou and her mysterious son Credence in the movie. Previously, we’ve only known about the Second Salemers, a dangerous No-Maj group who want to destroy magic, witches, and wizards at all costs. This is our first glimpse of the likely antagonists of the film in character (as well as their straight-edge bangs).

Apart from the Second Salemers, the movie will follow Newt Scamander (the author behind one of Harry's textbooks), as he visits New York City in 1926. He comes to NYC from London with a briefcase full of magical creatures.

The problem? Some of the creatures wind up getting loose and biting a No-Maj, and it's up to Scamander to get them back.

"Fantastic Beasts" will be in theaters in November, and Warner Bros. will be taking over Hall H this Saturday at San Diego's Comic-Con at 11:30 a.m. PT.

Keep up with Tech Insider on Facebook and Twitter for all the latest from Comic-Con.

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When designing the "Harry Potter" universe on screen, everything had to be consistent. It's an elaborate world, and just one slip could ruin the magic.

But there was one major problem the filmmakers faced over and over again: the series wasn't finished.

Half of the "Harry Potter" movies were made before J.K. Rowling finished the books. So when some things were introduced early in the story, it wasn't clear how they'd be important later on.

One complicated prop in particular needed to reveal a lot more: The Marauder's Map. It's a magical map of Hogwarts' grounds that reveals the location of everyone on it.

The Map first appears in Harry's third year at Hogwarts. In "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," Harry uses it to discover Peter Pettigrew, the man who betrayed the location of his parents to Lord Voldemort. But it's useful, and Harry ends up using it in his later years at Hogwarts.

Miraphora Mina, co-founder of the graphic design firm MinaLima, was one of the three people who designed everything in the "Harry Potter" movies. She didn't anticipate the scope of the map's importance after "Prisoner of Azkaban," or how to show parts of Hogwarts that weren't known be known in earlier films.

She solved the problem by making it a little more magical.

"The thing is, it’s designed in such a way where when you unfold it, it’s a mystery," Lina said. "You don’t quite know what layer you’re on. It’s like a scroll. And so we were able to keep adding new layers of map, and layers of school, into the design of it."

As the films progressed, she added new things to different layers of the map. The map was based on the architectural drawings of Hogwarts made by Stuart Craig. Because it's it's enormous, it's folded up to become portable.

Here's what the map looked like in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," at the 47 second mark:

With each subsequent movie, different parts of the folded map were revealed, with previously unknown parts of Hogwarts added on. In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," for example, MinaLima added a corridor on the seventh floor.

It was also tricky because the map itself had such a complicated design. It was made by Harry's father, James Potter, and his friends Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin while they were themselves students at Hogwarts a couple of decades earlier. Mina dug into their characters to design the map, rather than making it look like a treasure map or something more generic. Having flickering, animated, and handwritten lettering helped. 

 "We knew they were smart kids with a lot of cunning and craftiness, and with very good imaginations," she said. "So we came up with something that was sort of whimsical, but it also had a sort of intelligence, which is why we wanted to have all the words."

There are other objects throughout the "Harry Potter" series that turn out to have later significance. The most prominent example is Tom Riddle's diary in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." In the sixth book, we learn it turned out by the to be a horcrux, an object housing a fragment of Voldemort's soul.

But there are few objects as complicated as the Marauder's Map that had to appear so much onscreen. And every movie revealed a new layer of its design.

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"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" won't be on bookshelves until July 31. But on Amazon, it's already the bestselling book of the year based on pre-orders alone.

If you look at Amazon's best sellers of 2016 page, J.K. Rowling's new book is on top, ahead of "StrengthsFinder 2.0" by Tom Rath and Dr. Suess's "Oh, the Places You'll Go."

This particular "Harry Potter" story is a play, about what happens to Harry and the crew 19 years after the events of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." It's already in previews on stage in London. There's no word yet of when the play will get to the rest of the world (though we might get a movie), so reading the script is the only way most people will be able to find out what happens.

Rowling's been keeping busy. In addition to the play, she wrote the script for the movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," out in November.

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