With only a couple of days to go until Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is released in bookstores around the world, a leak has seemingly sprung from the side of the cauldron.
On Thursday morning a Redditor named The_Augurey posted a photo of what appears to be a physical copy of The Cursed Child. The person included the caption, “I stayed up far too late last night reading this, but in my opinion it was worth it.”
According to the Reddit user, their brother bought it “from a small bookstore last Sunday,” and they “guess [the bookstore] opened the box early and started selling them.”
Problem is, there’s a strict embargo on opening the boxes and releasing the books before 12:01 a.m. local time on Sunday, July 31.
The excitement around Potter combined with the number of books that have to be shipped around the world ahead of the July 31 release are conducive to a leak occurring. The same thing happened with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows in 2005 and 2007.
Breaking embargoes can cost troublemakers thousands of dollars, so it’s unlikely anyone would do it knowing the potential consequences.
That said, even booksellers, distributors, and others who get their hands on shipments in advance may not be able to resist sneaking a copy into the wild. Oh No They Didn’t deemed me a “MuggleNet whore” after I received an early copy of the final Hunger Games book Mockingjay from someone in 2010.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.