How Old Is Harry Potter Today? The 'Boy' Wizard’s Real Age Revealed

Harry Potter, the boy who lived. How old is he? He can’t be more than 25 now, right? He was 17 when the series ended with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” but who remembers what year that came out? To add to the confusion, the books are obviously older than the movies, which ended with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” in 2011.

It’s turns out that Harry Potter turned 35 Friday. As Potterheads know, he also shares his birthday with English author J.K. Rowling, the creator of the beloved book-turned-movie series.

To explain why he’s 35 Friday, we take a trip back in time. The first “Harry Potter” book was published in June 1997, and Rowling said Harry was 10 at that time. However, Rowling started to write the series seven years earlier, in 1990, which means Harry was born in 1980. The author wrote the novels to be set in the '90s, a fact most fans don’t know since they became widely popular in the 2000s, and even more so after the first movie debuted in 2001.

Rowling gave an update on the wizard last year, in case anyone doubted Harry’s real age. She took to Pottermore, an interactive website for Potterheads, which allows people to submerge themselves into the world of witchcraft and wizardry without leaving their houses.

“About to turn 34, there are a couple of threads of silver in the famous Auror’s black hair, but he continues to wear the distinctive round glasses that some might say are better suited to a style-deficient twelve-year-old,” Rowling wrote about the character. “The famous lightning scar has company: Potter is sporting a nasty cut over his right cheekbone.” An Auror, for muggles (also known as non-magic folk) who don’t know, is the wizardry world’s version of a police officer.

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