JK Rowling Is (Kind Of) Giving You A New ‘Harry Potter’ Book This Year!

Nine years after the decade-long Harry Potter saga came to a close with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, JK Rowling has announced she’s releasing “the eighth story in Harry Potter canon” in just a few months. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I & II will be making its way into your greedy oversized child hands from late July.

If that title sounds familiar, however, it’s because it’s the same as the long-awaited stage play about to hit London’s West End. The book will in fact be a “script book” based on the same story recently written by JK Rowling, playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany. Announced on Pottermore just a few hours ago, the book will be published immediately after the play’s premiere in print and digital editions.

If you haven’t been following the endless stream of Potter news these days — which includes the impending release of filmic prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and a whole lot of the film’s original cast being cute together — Cursed Child picks off where The Deathly Hallows left off. Not that bit where Harry, Ron and Hermione triumphantly defeat Voldemort and ensured the future prosperity of the wizarding world, but rather the awkward epilogue in which they heroically battle middle age and live through their dorky kids.

“It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children,” reads the play’s original synopsis. “While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”

The eighth Harry Potter Story. Nineteen years later. Read it on July 31st! #CursedChild #HPScriptBook pic.twitter.com/4FNi2tltfI

— Scholastic (@Scholastic) February 10, 2016

You may be disappointed by the fact this isn’t the ‘real’ Harry Potter you knew as a kid, but you have to admit it’s a hell of a lot better than most of Rowling’s regular announcements.

*jk rowling wakes up* what’s today’s tweet *spins large bingo cage* hagrid… is… pansexual and… he later joined isis

— brian feldman (@bafeldman) June 8, 2015

–

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I & II will be released July 31.