Fantastic Beasts will introduce Harry Potter fans to a new type of magical power

Fans who thought they knew all about the magic powers in the Harry Potter universe are in for a surprise, as it's been revealed that a character in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has very different abilities to what we've seen before.

In the film, new character Queenie Goldstein, played by Alison Sudol, is a mind reader – a Legilimens. But although this power has appeared before, it takes a very different form in Queenie.

"She's basically a complete and utter magical empath," Sudol told Entertainment Weekly,. "She's able to read people – so it's not just reading somebody's thoughts. She can read into someone's story, she can see people's goals. And even though she's able to do magic with her wand, a lot of her magic is actually internal, which makes her a different type of wizard or witch."

Harry Potter fans will, of course, be familiar with Leglimency – but the way Queenie appears to use it contrasts with the methods of, say, Snape who used it as an attack on the resisting mind.

Queenie works a menial desk job at the Magical Congress of the United States of America, and is "incredibly fun, playful, joyful and free-spirited, kind and wise, and also has a sort of stillness about her because she's always tuning into people." Sounds like our kind of witch.

There's now just 100 days to go until the film – JK Rowling's screenwriting debut – hits cinemas, so expect more secrets about the American wizarding world to emerge over the next few weeks. Can't. Wait.