X

Harry Potter's birthday casts a sweet spell on Twitter

Happee birthdae, Harry.

amandakooser.jpg
amandakooser.jpg
Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
See full bio
Amanda Kooser
2 min read

July 31 is a magical day. It's Harry Potter's birthday, and the beloved fictional wizard just turned 38 in 2018. Twitter loves a good reason to celebrate, and everyone from Google to the University of Glasgow has joined the social media party to toast The Boy Who Lived.

A lot of fans are remembering the sweetly misspelled cake that half-giant Hagrid gave Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) on his 11th birthday. In the movie adaptation, the cake is shown with green icing over pink frosting reading "Happee birthdae Harry."

Google Maps marked Harry's birthday by showing us the way to Diagon Alley at the Universal Orlando Resort in Street View. 

The University of Glasgow in Scotland found a perfect pitch for enticing new students. It shared a photo of its Gothic Revival main building with the caption "We're basically Hogwarts! #HappyBirthdayHarryPotter"

Dictionary.com chose to commemorate the day by acknowledging one of Harry's best friends: "Hermione: The feminine form of Hermes, the messenger god. Hermione Granger: The girl who delivers Ron and Harry from danger (again and again and again)."

Dictionary.com also chose a very fitting Word of the Day, "hagridden," which means worried or tormented, as by a witch.

Pottermore, the online home of author J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World, posted a birthday tribute to Harry's iconic glasses: "Ask any glasses-wearer: you can never have enough pairs. Happy birthday to our bespectacled hero, Harry!" A cute GIF picks Harry's spectacles out of a lineup of other glasses.

The Big Sheep, a family entertainment center in Devon, England that was once a sheep farm, welcomed a new baby sheep on Tuesday and said it will call him "Harry."

July 31 is also author Rowling's birthday. She acknowledged the influx of good wishes on Twitter, writing, "I'm a long way out of my usual time zone and have just woken up to hundreds of early birthday greetings! Thank you."

One of the sweetest tributes came from Warner Bros. Studio Tour London, which shared a series of messages from fans expressing what Harry Potter means to them. One person wrote, "Harry Potter helped me believe that anything is possible. It gave me a family even though I'm halfway across the world from mine."

Though Twitter can be a snarky place, almost all of the #HappyBirthdayHarryPotter tweets we saw are positive messages from fans and businesses sharing their love of the books and movies. And that may be the most magical part of this celebratory day.

Culture: Your hub for everything from film and television to music, comics, toys and sports.

Technically Literate: Original works of short fiction with unique perspectives on tech, exclusively on CNET.