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Celebrate 20 Years Of Harry Potter With A Brilliant Facebook Easter Egg

Celebrate 20 Years Of Harry Potter With A Brilliant Facebook Easter Egg

The social network has rolled out an Easter egg to celebrate the occasion.

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To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter (oh my god, I may as well put myself into a retirement home and start writing my will now) Facebook has paid homage with a rather cool little feature.

The social network has rolled out a so-called Easter egg to celebrate the occasion.

Easter eggs - not the chocolate kind - are little, usually fairly pointless, hidden features inside a piece of technology. There are more of them knocking about out there than any one person could ever hope to find given that there is probably at least one hidden within any application you could care to think of.

To activate this particular hidden treat and celebrate 20 years since the world's favourite wizard (sorry Gandalf, Merlin etc, but you know how it is) appeared on paper, all you need to do is comment or post the name of one of the four Hogwarts houses and your screen will be graced with a little touch of magic.


Credit:Tyler L. Jones/Facebook

As well as typing Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin, users can also type the name Harry Potter to activate the Easter egg.

The fact that Facebook has bothered to roll out this special feature proves just how influential the Harry Potter franchise has been and what a huge imprint it has left behind.

It's been 20 whole years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone hit the shelves and its legacy is now so ingrained in popular culture that it's difficult to imagine a time before it was around.

Speaking to Blue Peter's Konnie Huq in 1997 about what it was like to see her first book in the shops, J.K. Rowling - known then as Joanne - said: "That was the best moment of all.

"Better than anything that has come since, was me seeing it - and it was a real book in a proper, real bookshop and it was wonderful."

Credit: Bloomsbury

Since then, J.K. Rowling's creation has taken over the world and made her one of the most beloved authors of our time.

But it wasn't a success straight off the bat. In fact, Harry Potter got knocked back by as many as 12 publishers before it finally got picked up.

"My agent rang me and... he was so low key about it!" Rowling told Lauren Laverne in The Guardian.

"One publisher had kept it for six months, which obviously gave me a lot of hope, and then they said no.

"I was devastated. Then [my agent] phoned me up and said, 'Well, Bloomsbury want it' - very casual! Not realising he's giving me the gift of my life. And there was this long pause, and I just said: 'So... you're saying I am going to be published?' I was beside myself."

You'd be kicking yourself if you were one of the ones who said no.

Well, here we are, 20 years, seven books, eight films and a load of merch later and Harry Potter is bigger than J.K. could have ever envisaged.

So, what are you waiting for? Get on Facebook and celebrate by spamming the hell out of that Easter egg.

Words: Paddy Maddison

Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Topics: Harry Potter