Expelliarmus!

What links Voldemort to Elvis Presley? Or Bumblebees to Dumbledore? And why DID Joanne Rowling become JK? Twenty years after the first book, More presents 20 totally wizard facts for Potter fans

1. Five hundred

The initial hardback print run of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone when it was first published on June 26, 1997, by Bloomsbury.

2. Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon

The meaning of the Hogwarts school motto, Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.

3. Global traveller

If all the Harry Potter books sold were placed end to end they would circle the planet six times.

4. Dictionary corner

In 2003 the word ‘Muggle’, meaning a non-magical person in the Harry Potter series, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

5. Goblet of fire

In 2003, members of the Jesus NonDenominational Church in Greenville, Michigan, publicly demonstrated their concern over what they perceived to be evil in the Harry Potter books by gathering around a bonfire and burning them.

6. Words never fail her

For the entire Harry Potter series JK Rowling wrote 1,100,086 words. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone contains 77,887 words.

7. Touching tribute

Natalie McDonald, who appears on page 159 of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, was a real person. She was a nine-year-old girl from Toronto, Canada, who was dying of leukaemia. She wrote to JK Rowling asking what was going to happen in the next Harry Potter book because she would not live long enough to read it. The kindly author emailed back but Natalie had died a day earlier. In tribute she became a first-year student at Hogwarts named by the Sorting Hat in Gryffindor – the house for the brave at heart – in the fourth book. When Rowling was in Canada for a book tour she visited the McDonald family.

9. King of magic

Voldemort (right) was given Elvis as a middle name in the French edition. The change was necessary so that his full name – Tom Elvis Jedusor – would be an anagram of ‘je suis Voldemort’.

10. On the buses

Ernie and Stanley, the driver and conductor of the Knight Bus, are named after JK Rowling’s grandfathers.

11. K is for Kathleen

Several publishers rejected the first Harry Potter book, saying it was too long and literary, but Bloomsbury Publishing finally accepted it in 1996. The company suggested that Rowling use the name ‘JK’ rather than her real name, Joanne Rowling, to appeal more to male readers. She took the K from her grandmother’s name Kathleen but neither Kathleen nor K are part of her legal name.

12. Code name Potmaker

To prevent Harry Potter And The Deathly Hollows from being leaked, it was given code names, such as Edinburgh Potmakers and The Life And Times Of Clara Rose Lovett: An Epic Novel Covering Many Generations.

13. Birthday girl (and boy)

JK Rowling and Harry Potter share a birthday: July 31.

14. Sold!

The seven Harry Potter books have sold 500 million copies worldwide.

16. Dog Star Sirius

Sirius Black is named after the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky, also known as the Dog Star. This is very apt since when Sirius used his skills as an animagus he turned into a big black dog.

17. Her dark materials

The dementors are based on Rowling’s struggle with depression after her mother’s death. Her mother died in 1990 from multiple sclerosis.

18. Eighty

The number of languages including Welsh, Latin and Ancient Greek that the Harry Potter books have been translated into.

19. The Philosopher’s phone

Arthur Weasley enters 62442 into a telephone keypad when he takes Harry and his friends to the Ministry of Magic. The letters underneath those numbers on a standard mobile phone spell out the word ‘magic’.

20. Jacko cast no spell

Michael Jackson once approached JK Rowling about making a musical based on the books. She declined.

The 20th anniversary editions of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ are available now from Bloomsbury