J.K. Rowling's Teacher Application Before 'Potter' Fame for Sale at $250k

J.K. Rowling was putting pen to paper for teaching gigs before 'Harry Potter' ever took off, and now one of her employment bids can be yours ... for the price of a modest home.

An application Rowling filled out in 1996 to teach in Scotland is currently for sale for $250,000. We didn't screw up the number of zeroes, you read correctly ... $2-5-0-0-0-0. The original app is being sold through Moments in Time.

The document -- part of a 12-page bundle -- is definitely a huge part of Rowling's story of success. She'd finished her first 'Potter' manuscript in 1995, but was still shopping it around to publishers before one of 'em finally bit in '97 ... and the rest, of course, is history.

Before that though, she had a brief stint teaching secondary languages to high schoolers at Leith Academy -- a result of her filing this application. It lists her employment and education history, as well as experience which she considered relevant.

It's interesting ... ya gotta wonder if her time at Leith (and the application process to get in) dictated anything she went on to write about Hogwarts in the books.