JK Rowling, creator of the billion-dollar boarding school fantasy series, is famous for putting her hero Harry Potter in harm’s way. But does she know that he has been lying in a Karoo grave for nearly a century? In a strange time warp of fate, Cradock in the Karoo Heartland might well hold the secret to Harry’s fate. The river town – with its back to the spekboom thickets of the Eastern Cape and its front to the vastness of the Karoo plains – boasts a classic country cemetery that becomes a vampire movie set with the first swirl of morning mist. And somewhere in the midst of departed nuns, frontiersmen and soldiers who fell in the Anglo-Boer War, is the gravestone of none other than Harry Potter.

Harry Potter was born in London in February 1864. He was the son of William Potter and Elizabeth Saunders. He was married to Blanche Elizabeth Bruce. They married on the 19 September 1891 in Drypool, St Andrew, Yorkshire, England. We’re not sure when he came to South Africa, but it must have been some time between his marriage and when he died in 1910. His cause of death is listed as PTHISIS. (Pulomonary Tuberculosis). He probably came to Cradock to take in the dry Karoo air which was greatly lauded as a cure for TB at the time. At the time of his death, his occupation is given as retired merchant. He died at the age of 46 years and 5 months on the 28 July 1910. His wife Blanche died in 1942 in Harrismith in the Orange Free State. Her death notice was signed by her nephew John Barnet Bruce. It was her wish to be buried beside her husband in Cradock.