Potter is back in new short story

J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter series enjoys great popularity among China's young readers. [Photo/China Daily]

A short story on a Harry Potter fan website by author J.K. Rowling has the boy wizard grown, married and with a few threads of silver in that mop of black hair.

Fictional boy wizard Harry Potter made his first appearance in seven years on July 8, featuring as a nearly 34-year-old with gray hair in a new short story by author J.K. Rowling. In an article on the "Pottermore" website written in the form of a gossip column, Harry and his friends reunite at a tournament of the broomstick-riding game Quidditch.

Harry's redhead friend Ron Weasley is said to be thinning on top, while the 1,500-word story raises questions over the state of Harry's marriage to Ron's sister Ginny Weasley.

Millionaire author Rowling meanwhile gives a teaser when she writes that Harry - played by the actor Daniel Radcliffe in the films spawned by the book - sports a new scar on his cheek to go with the lightning-shaped one on his forehead.

"About to turn 34, there are a couple of threads of silver in the famous Auror's (high-level wizard's) black hair, but he continues to wear the distinctive round glasses that some might say are better suited to a style-deficient 12-year-old," the story says.

There is a further hint of things to come when the story asks whether the "chosen one" might be "embroiled in fresh mysteries that will one day explode upon us all, plunging us into a new age of terror and mayhem".

Rowling has sold more than 450 million copies of the Harry Potter books - which tell the story of the young wizard and his friends at the Hogwarts school of magic - while they have also spawned a string of hit films and the Pottermore website.

Her latest piece is written in the form of a gossip column by Rita Skeeter of the Daily Prophet, a character from the Potter books who draws on the author's own vocal criticisms of British tabloid journalism.

In the story, Harry brings his two sons James and Albus - last seen in the epilogue to the seventh and final installment Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - to see the "2014 Quidditch Cup".