OOPS!
(Warning, don't read this if you haven't read THE GOBLET OF FIRE!)
Are you an eagle-eye reader? If so, you might be one of the Harry Potter fans who spotted a mistake in HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE when it was released in July 2000. The mistake appears in a passage late in the book, during Harry's dramatic encounter with the dark wizard Lord Voldemort. In this scene, Harry sees the ghosts of his parents (murdered by Voldemort when Harry was just a baby) emerge from Voldemort's wand --- father James Potter first, then Lily Potter. But the author has already explained that the ghosts of Voldemort's victims are supposed to emerge from his wand in the reverse order they were killed, and Potter fans know from earlier books that James Potter was killed before his wife. Both Scholastic (Rowling's U.S. publisher) and Bloomsbury (her publisher in the U.K.) made the same correction in later printings of the book. Unfortunately, the fix didn't make everyone happy. Some grown-up Harry Potter fans thought that the error was made on purpose, setting us up for an exciting plot twist in Book 5. But the publishers assure us it isn't so. "It was a case of human error," according to Judy Corman, a spokesperson for Scholastic. We're sure there will be plenty of excitement in the new book anyway!