In the early 2000s, few phenomena pierced through demographics and cultural niches as potently as Harry Potter.

Attempts to recreate the phenomenon, be it The Hunger Games or Twilight, never captured the zeitgeist like J.K. Rowling’s storytelling. As popular literary trends go, the closest recent fad was Game of Thrones, but that was predominantly buoyed by the HBO adaptation; nobody stood in lines for book releases. While Rowling’s prose was aimed at children, her storytelling captivated readers of all ages.