Lore explainer · 2026-10-11
Two more Pocket Potters: McGonagall, and Fred and George
Bloomsbury adds McGonagall and the Weasley twins to the Pocket Potters shelf on 23 February 2027. Thirty-two pages each, and not a new story among them.
# The Pocket Potters shelf grows to seven
Bloomsbury is adding two volumes to the Pocket Potters shelf, and collectors will want the arithmetic: five becomes seven on 23 February 2027, when *Professor McGonagall* and *Fred and George Weasley* join the set.
The object first, because that is what a collector is buying. Each Pocket Potter is a 32-page illustrated hardcover — a character guide, not a new story. Illustrations, quotations, and facts drawn from the seven novels, aimed at younger readers but shelved by plenty of adults. The two new volumes keep the series's physical pattern: small, matching, complete-in-themselves.
*Pocket Potters: Professor McGonagall*, illustrated by Natalie Smillie, takes the deputy headmistress: Gryffindor's head of house, Transfiguration mistress, registered Animagus, the giver of the Nimbus 2000. Smillie's is the second illustrator credit in the line's newest pair, and the books are beginning to read as a curated gallery as much as a reference set.
*Pocket Potters: Fred and George Weasley*, illustrated by Helen Brady, takes the twins at full tilt: the pranks, the passages, the inventions — Puking Pastilles, Extendable Ears, Canary Creams — through the Hogwarts exit and into Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. If any single volume justifies the word "pocket," it is the one about the brothers who weaponized them.
They join five existing Pocket Potters: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, and Luna Lovegood. Seven spines, one publisher, one format. For the completist, the interesting question is who is missing — Snape, Hagrid, and Sirius all feel inevitable, and none is announced.
Column: 23 February 2027, Bloomsbury, 32 pages each, Smillie and Brady on illustration. Margin: the shelf wants ten.
What the stories show
Minerva McGonagall is deputy headmistress of Hogwarts, head of Gryffindor house, and a registered Animagus who takes the form of a tabby cat. She teaches Transfiguration. In Harry's first year she buys him a Nimbus 2000 after watching him catch Neville's Remembrall, making him the youngest Seeker in a century. Fred and George Weasley are identical twins and Gryffindor Beaters who leave Hogwarts in their seventh year during Dolores Umbridge's tenure, staging a broomstick exit through the Entrance Hall. They open Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes at 93 Diagon Alley. Their inventions include Puking Pastilles, Extendable Ears, and Skiving Snackboxes.
Where this is a guess
Perhaps the interesting question is who Bloomsbury picks next. The shelf so far favors the beloved and the quotable, which would argue for Hagrid or Sirius Black, both rich in memorable moments. One reading is that the publisher is saving Severus Snape for a milestone tenth volume, the way a set holds back its most argued-over figure. Or perhaps the line stays with safer favorites and never touches the divisive ones at all, which would leave the shelf charming but incomplete.