The combined word count of the seven Harry Potter novels is 1,084,170 words – and in the near-decade since Deathly Hallows was published, it’s sometimes felt like J K Rowling has offered up just as many words about the series. (This is a fairly facetious exaggeration, I apologise, but bear with me here.) Over the years, Rowling has given readers additional “canonical” information about the Wizarding World and its characters, releasing numerous extra scenes and short stories, giving extensive interviews, offering up a barrage of tweets (some prompted by readers’ questions, some not). Since 2009, new official information has also been released via the vast canon-sanctioned universe that is the Pottermore website.
The Harry Potter extra-canonical universe isn’t unique – plenty of fictional worlds, particularly in sci-fi and fantasy, are fleshed out beyond the original source material. (The Star Wars expanded universe – which I know is no longer official canon, but that’s a story for another day – is arguably the most famous current example.) But what does make Rowling’s world unique among its contemporaries is how singly-authored it is: she doesn’t write everything that appears on Pottermore, but this post-book information comes from her, often delivered, as I once wrote to complain about the habit, “as if she is [her characters’] publicist rather than their creator”.
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