New heroes expand the wizarding world

Meet the folks who make it fantastic

You know Harry, Hermione and Ron. Now meet Newt, Tina, Jacob and Queenie.

Just like the Hogwarts kids became the heroes of eight Harry Potter films, a new crew comes to the fore — though more oldschool, since it’s 1926 — in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find

Them (in theaters Friday), the first of five planned movies that expand J.K. Rowling ’s wizarding world.

When fantastical creatures get loose in New York City, magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) teams with bookish witch Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) and a NoMaj (read: non-magical) dude named Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) to round them up, though they get in the middle of an increasingly tense conflict between magic folks and regular humans.

Unlike the Potter trio, though, these new characters are grown-ups.

“They’re not at school — they’re out in the big wide world. They have their own issues, and they have their own quirks and personalities,” says Fantastic Beasts director David Yates. “But I would argue that they have the same endearing qualities as that trio.”

They also have a dark wizard looming on their horizon — in

Beasts’ case, not Voldemort but Gellert Grindelwald (played by He Who Must Not Be Named Yet). Yates runs down what these new heroes bring to Rowling ’s cinematic mythology: