An unexpected character from the Harry Potter franchise has become the unofficial mascot of this year's Chinese New Year Celebrations.

To welcome in the year of the fire horse, you won't see Harry or Hermione, or even Ron, although his red hair could maybe work with the "fire" horse theme. No. Instead, Draco Malfoy has become synonymous with this year's festivities and in a big way too, not just as a joke amongst fans.

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What started as just a meme shared online has transformed into a full scale effort. Large banners with a young Tom Felon have been hung across malls in China, along with posters and other Chinese New Year decorations featuring an image of the young actor.

The question you're probably wondering is WHY? It's pretty simple actually.

The Chinese translation of Malfoy is 'Ma-er-fu'. The first character means horse in chinese and 'fu' is a symbol for good fortune, which is closely associated with the holiday. So it only makes sense that a character whose name roughly translates to "Horse" and "fortune" is tied to a celebration about the year of the fire horse and good fortune.

The Harry Potter franchise is massively popular in China. In fact, it was announced that China will be getting it's own studio tour experience, that's supposedly going to be larger than the already existing studio tour in London.

Felton joined in on the fun as well. He recently joined the cast of Broadway's production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and posted this Instagram Reel putting a poster of himself on his dressing room door. 

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One top comment applauded Felton for his involvement and placing the poster upside down which is the "correct" way. Another user chimed in to clarify the significance.

"It’s actually a Chinese wordplay. The character '福' (meaning blessing or good fortune) is sometimes hung upside down because 'upside down' (倒 dào) sounds the same as 'arrive' (到 dào) in Chinese. So when it’s flipped, it sounds like 'fortune has arrived.'" 

There you have it. What started as some memes shared on social media, has become a nationwide symbol for a holiday. That is some next level fandom we can get behind!