$4 million for more Rowling

A book of fairy tales created, handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling sold for nearly $4 million at auction Thursday.

The buyer, London art agent Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox, now has one of only seven copies of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” which is leather bound with silver mounts.

The book originally had been expected to sell for about $100,000. The standing-room-only crowd at Sotheby’s auction house applauded as bidding topped the $2-million mark.

The money will benefit the Children’s Voice, a charity co-founded in 2005 by Rowling and Baroness Nicholson, a member of Britain’s House of Lords.

Rowling, 42, whose Harry Potter books have sold nearly 400 million copies and been translated into 64 languages, wrote the Beedle tales after finishing the seventh and final work in the Potter series. She said the six other copies of the Beedle books have been given to people who were closely connected to the Harry Potter collection.