Fake Rowling Tweet Used in 20th-Anniversary House Edition

by · November 30, 2017

We all know how quickly rumors can spread, how fan theories can seem like truth, and how J.K. Rowling shoots down theories and rumors on her Twitter account. Once something makes it to a printed book, however, you would think that it’s, well…. legit and checked by Rowling’s team.

It seems not.

Bloomsbury, Harry Potter’s British publisher, recently released special House editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to celebrate the 20th anniversary earlier this year. Fans were keen to get their hands on their own House edition, and we were also excited by the seemingly new pieces of information inside the books.

Particularly of interest, we thought, was the little nugget of information in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw editions that told us that Professors Sprout and Flitwick had once been in a relationship.

This information seemingly comes from a tweet from Rowling, stating that the two had dated. Now, however, it seems that the tweet was faked by CollegeHumor (along with a few others, which you might recognize).

 

 

Bloomsbury has already corrected this error, and subsequent editions of the books will not have this piece of information in, so if you’ve got one of the ones with the fake information in it, hold on to it, you’ve got something unusual! We can’t help but wonder how this managed to slip into the book in the first place – a case of a Muggle error, we presume, or some magic that backfired.

 

 

It just goes to show that even Rowling’s official team isn’t safe from fan rumors and theories that fly around. You can’t always believe what you read – but perhaps we should have already learned that lesson from the Potter series itself.

What do you think of this revelation? Are you glad to learn that Flitwick and Sprout were never in a relationship? Or sad? Let us know.