When the first book in theHarry Potterseries, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (or “Philosopher’s Stone” if you’re in the U.K.), released back in 1997, it was easy enough to be a Potterhead. All one had to do in the first few years of Potter-mania was keep up with the books, and you were as well-versed on the Wizarding World as anyone. However, it’s been a long time since Potter lore was contained merely to the pages ofJ.K. Rowling’s sevenHarry Potternovels, and her tales have since spawned theme parks, supplemental literature, a play, countless websites, and of course, theHarry PotterandFantastic Beastsfilm franchises.
If you’ve kept up with the films, you know that while theHarry Pottermovies stick pretty closely to the books, they do take some liberties here and there. Meanwhile, theFantastic Beastsfilms are creating their narrative almost from whole cloth, with characters and storylines that never existed in the Potterverse prior to the films. Because it can keep track of ten films worth of story spanning over a century’s worth of events, we’ve put together a detailed timeline of every event that takes place (or is implied to take place, or would’ve had to take place in order forotherthings to take place) within theHarry Pottermovie-verse.
Of course, films don’t tend to hand out a lot of precise dates, so we’ve had to do some investigative work in order to pin down when a lot of these took place. Most of the time, we could use the dates fromWizarding Worldor theHarry Potter Wiki(many thanks to the folks who help keep both of those sites updated and well sourced) to help fill in the blanks, although sometimes when their dates seemed to conflict with what was presented in the films, we had to take an educated guess. As such, it’s always possible there’s a line or visual clue we missed here and there that would alter one of our listed dates, or a minor event we forgot to include, and of course there aremoreFantastic Beastsmoviesstill to come which could – and almost certainly will - alter and add to this timeline. So take this more as a general guide than an irrefutable, all-inclusive roadmap to the Harry Potter series.
That said, we think we’re pretty close.
Obviously,spoilersabound:
Ancient History and Hogwarts Founders
First Millennium
Sometime during the Middle Ages (476-1492):
Sometime before 976:
Middle Ages
Late 10th Century
11th Century
13th Century
14th Century
15th Century
Early Modern Period
16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
19th Century
Early 20th Century: The Rise of Grindelwald
Global Wizarding War (1930s - 1945)
A Time of Peace
The First Wizarding War: 1970-1981
Between Wars
The Second Wizarding War 1995-1998
