HPfGU Frequently Asked Questions

Also read Grey Wolf's summary of more common post-OotP discussions. 

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JKR's Web Site FAQ

• Questions and answers about how to navigate the site are not appropriate for the main list (HPforGrownUps).  Please direct those questions to HPfGU-Off Topic Chatter.
  
  You can also consult Potter's Keys to find all of the navigation instructions in one place.
  
  
• Canon-related material (book info) that JKR reveals is suitable for main-list discussion: for example, the fact that Arthur Weasley won't be the next Minister for Magic.

Canon-Related Material from the Site

(updated 16 Apr 05)

• Flitwick is part-goblin. JKR doesn't envision him as small as he appeared in the movies.
  
  
• None of the characters in the series has returned from the future.
  
  
• Nicholas Flamel will not be teaching potions at Hogwarts, because he's dead.
  
  
• Colin and Dennis Creavey will not be the next Gryffindor beaters.
  
  
• Charlie Weasley's birthday is December 12th.
  
  
• The Luna/Neville ship is dead in the water.
  
  
• The Lestranges were not sent to the Longbottom home to kill Neville, because they didn't know about the prophecy; they went after Neville's parents.
  
  
• The Order of the Phoenix does not communicate via chocolate frog cards. They communicate using their wands in a method that we've already seen (probably the silvery wisp that Dumbledore uses to summon Hagrid in Goblet of Fire).
  
  
• All young people with wizarding ability are allocated a slot at Hogwarts; parents might choose not to send their kids, though.
  
  
• Hermione was nearly 12 when she arrived at Hogwarts.
  
  
• The "stringy" boy in the Thestrals class scene is indeed Theodore Nott.
  
  
• Hermione's wand core is dragon heartstring, so the trio represents the three Ollivander cores.
  
  
• James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter dubbed themselves "marauders" (it's not just a fan term).
  
  
• The "magic gene" is dominant and resilient, hence the rarity of squibs.
  
  
• Squibs cannot attend Hogwarts nor can they ever do magic, but they do have "access to certain magical objects and creatures that can help them."
  
  
• Arabella Figg "does a roaring trade in cross-bred cats and Kneazles."
  
  
• Arabella Figg did not actually see the dementors that attacked Harry and Dudley, but she knew enough about them to describe their effects.
  
  
• The trio's wand woods are designated to them according to their birthdates and the Celtic woods to which they correspond: Harry = holly, Ron = ash, Hermione = vine.
  
  
• According to European tradition, holly repels evil, whereas yew — whose sap is poisonous and which can achieve great longevity — symbolizes both death and resurrection. (Voldemort's wand is yew.)
  
  
• Godric's Hollow is a village.
  
  
• Gideon and Fabian Prewett are Molly's brothers, and they were killed in the first Voldemort conflict; it explains her fears and her over-protectiveness.
  
  
• Harry does not stand trial again after leaving the Dursleys in Book 6.
  


• Rubeus Hagrid's Birthday is December 6th.
  
  
• Bill Weasley's birthday is November 29th.
  
  
• Three of the chapter titles for HBP are "Spinners End," "Draco's Detour," and "Felix Felicis."
  
  
• Molly Weasley's birthday is October 30th.
  
  
• Colin's camera is a Muggle camera, but it was modified to run on magic instead of batteries.
  
  
• Dumbledore's howler to Petunia, "Remember my last," refers to the letter he left with baby Harry when he took him to the Dursleys. There were other letters from Dumbledore, some sent to the Dursleys as a couple and some sent to Petunia only.
  
  
• Lupin and James did not switch bodies before James was killed, because "James would never have saved himself and left his wife and son to die."
  
  
• JKR describes Sirius's personality/character thus: "Sirius is very good at spouting bits of excellent personal philosophy, but he does not always live up to them. For instance, he says in Goblet of Fire that if you want to know what a man is really like, 'look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.' But Sirius loathes Kreacher, the house-elf he has inherited, and treats him with nothing but contempt. Similarly, Sirius claims that nobody is wholly good or wholly evil, and yet the way he acts towards Snape suggests that he cannot conceive of any latent good qualities there. Of course, these double standards exist in most of us; we might know how we ought to behave, but actually doing it is a different matter!
  
  "Sirius is brave, loyal, reckless, embittered and slightly unbalanced by his long stay in Azkaban. He has never really had the chance to grow up; he was around twenty-two when he was sent off to Azkaban, and has had very little normal adult life. … Sirius's great redeeming quality is how much affection he is capable of feeling. He loved James like a brother and he went on to transfer that attachment to Harry."
  
  
• The Heads of House were members of their respective houses, so McGonagall was a Gryffindor, Snape a Slytherin, etc.
  
  
• Bill is two years older than Charlie, who is three years older than Percy, who is two years older than Fred and George, who are two years older than Ron, who is a year older than Ginny.
  
  
• Fred and George did not notice the "Peter Pettigrew" dot on the Marauder's Map because they likely didn't know Sirius's story. Even if they had, they wouldn't have had reason to think that it was the same person that Sirius supposedly murdered. Furthermore, they used the map to make mischief and there were several hundred dots on the map at any given time, so they had no reason to focus on anything not related to their current escapade.
  
  
• Molly and Arthur Weasley did not know Sirius prior to his imprisonment.
  
  
• Peeves is an indestructible spirit of chaos, not a ghost (he was never alive) so he can interact with matter in ways that ghosts can't, such as chewing gum, unscrewing chandeliers, and tossing water balloons.
  
  
• More characters are going to snuff it in Books 6 and 7.
  
  
• The leprechaun gold disappeared so that the Niffler scene in GoF could underscore how hard it is sometimes to be the poor friend of someone rich.
  
  
• Professor Flitwick's birthday is October 17th.
  
  
• Petunia was exaggerating a bit in her hysterical rant about Lily coming "back from Hogwarts with frog spawn in her pockets and turn[ing] teacups into rats."  However, Lily received a few warnings for minor Statute of Secrecy breaches.


• "Lupin's Papers" and "The Lovegoods in Court" are not chapter titles in Book 6 ("another pile of Storgé," she says).
  
  
• Unlike wizards, house elves have the power to apparate within Hogwarts grounds. House-elf magic is of a different brand than wizard magic, and they need to apparate so that they can work unnoticed.
  

• A character in Half-Blood Prince is described using an old lion as comparison (similar to the toad for Umbridge, the bat for Snape, and the dragonfly for Trelawney). This person has yellow eyes, wire-rimmed glasses, and a "rangy, loping grace" despite a slight limp.
  
  
• There will be no prequel to the series, because we'll know enough about the past by the end of Book 7.
  
  
• Most of the older characters, including Snape, can see Thestrals.
  
  
• Neither Tom Riddle nor Voldemort has ever cared about or loved anyone.
  
  
• "[Dudley] is definitely a character without much back story."
  
  
• "Muggle-borns are not allowed to be Death Eaters, except in rare circumstances."
  
  
• Snape was not muggle-born, or he wouldn't have been allowed to be a Death Eater.
  
  
• We will see more of Blaise Zabini in Book 6.
  
  
• We may find out someday how Dumbledore got that scar of the London Underground on his knee.
  
  
• "[Hagrid bringing Grawp home] might be the one time that a monstrous something came good." (As opposed to bringing home Blast-Ended Skrewts, Aragog, and other monsters.)
  
  
• Two questions that no one has ever asked her — but that we should ponder — are:
  
  
• Why didn’t Voldemort die? "You should be wondering what he did to make sure that he did not die — I will put it that way. I don’t think that it is guessable."
  
  
• Why didn't Dumbledore kill or try to kill Voldemort in the scene in the ministry? "Dumbledore knows something slightly more profound than [the fact that there are two more books to go]."
  
  
• Sirius was too busy being the Big Rebel to get married.
  
  
• Harry does not have a godmother. Harry's christening was a "very hurried, quiet affair with just Sirius, just the best friend."
  
  
• Hermione is an only child.
  
  
• The faint smell of goats in the Hog's Head probably means that the barkeep is Aberforth Dumbledore. "I was quite proud of that clue. That is all that I am going to say.  I like the goat clue — I sniggered to myself about that one."
  
  
• Dumbledore's patronus takes the shape of a phoenix.
  
  
• Harry will survive to book seven.
  
  
• Aunt Petunia is not a squib; she is a muggle. But. There is more to her than we currently know.
  
  
• Paintings are all of dead people; they are a "faint imprint of" the person they represent. They are not as fully realized as ghosts, but they can give some meaningful counsel. However, they mostly repeat "catchphrases" that the living person would have said.
  
  
• "A lot happens in the sixth book and a lot of questions are answered."
  
  
• Ginny Weasley's birthday is August 11th.

• Although Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the original title of Chamber of Secrets, all traces of the half-blood prince subplot have been removed from CoS. 
  
  
• Something that Harry learned in CoS foreshadows something he learns in HPB. It has nothing to do with the "Prince" storyline.
  
  
• To those for whom purity of blood is important, someone is "half-blood" when their grandparents are Muggles, even if their parents are both wizards.  Harry is called "half-blood" because of his mother's Muggle parents.
  

• Arthur Weasley will not be the next Minister for Magic.
  
  
• The title of Book Six is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  It is not the Pillar of Storgé,  the Green Flame Torch,  the Toenail of Icklibõgg, or any other rumored title.
  

• The Half-Blood Prince is neither Harry nor Voldemort nor Tom Riddle.

• Dumbledore is not a relative of Harry's.

• Voldemort is not Harry's real father.

• Harry is not a decendant of Salazar Slytherin.

• Lily is definitely dead, and she was not a Death Eater.

• Crookshanks is not an animagus; he is half-kneazle.

• Neville Longbottom is not the son of Peter Pettigrew.

• Remus Lupin does not have a twin.

• Harry will not become Minister for Magic in HP7.

• Harry did not see his parents or Prof Quirrell die. He couldn't see the Thestrals until after the impact of Cedric's death had sunk in.

• Harry got the Maurader's Map back by nicking it from Fake!Moody's office at the end of the year.

• Lily is supposed to come out of the wand before James.

• Wizards can make themselves untraceable (like making buildings unplottable), so sending an owl to Sirius wouldn't have allowed the MoM to track him down.

• If Ginny had died at the end of CoS, it would have "strengthened the present-day Voldemort considerably."

• Marcus Flint had to repeat a year (or JKR made a mistake by including him in PoA).

• Flitwick is the head of Ravenclaw House.

• Prefects can deduct points, but Ron doesn't seem to have caught on to this.
  

• "Dean [Thomas] is from what he always thought was a pure Muggle background."  His father, a wizard, left the family when Dean was very young, and was killed by Death Eaters when he refused to join them.

• Theodore Nott Jr is the son of a Death Eater (Theodore Nott Sr) who is tight with Lucius Malfoy.

• The first chapter of HP6 was very nearly used in HP1, HP3, and HP5.

• Hermione's birthday is September 19th.

• Fred and George were born on April 1st.

• Molly's maiden name is Prewitt.

• Arthur is one of three brothers.

• Ginny's full name is Ginevra; she's the first Weasley girl in several generations.

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Other Interesting Facts on the Site
(Not for Main-List Discussion)

• Some of the new incantations in the movies were created by JKR, some by Steve Kloves. Those spells that were changed for the movie most likely were changed for dramatic impact.
  
  
• JKR wrote the text for the original Famous Wizard cards (which show up in her site's Wizard of the Month).
  
  
• JKR is fine with the creation of the Marauder's Map being left out of the PoA movie.
  
  
• JKR likes HBP better than she liked GoF, OoP, or CoS when she'd finished. "Book 6 does what I wanted it to do."
  
  
• Nobody calls her Joanie.
  
  
• The audio and non-English versions of the books don't come out at the same time as the original books because they can't be produced until the original passes through its final edit, i.e., the release of the original would have to be delayed considerably for all the versions to be released at once.
  
  
• JKR does not write every day, because that would be too hard on her children.


• JKR does not believe in fate but does believe in hard work and luck (the former often leading to the latter).
  
  
• Fred and George were not named after the actors who played the red-headed Tarleton twins in Gone with the Wind (Fred Crane and George Reeves). Their names "fitted well with the old fashioned names of the other Weasley brothers."
  
  
• Hedwig's name comes from St. Hedwig, patron saint of orphaned children, which JKR found in a book about medieval saints.
  
  
• JKR can see Thestrals.
  
  
• She says she's a bit disturbed by the fact that girls get crushes on Draco rather than on Harry. And on Snape. And on other bad boys. She advises girls not to go for the bad boys in real life.
  
  
• Rita Skeeter was originally named "Bridget," and she was going to be in the Leaky Cauldron when Harry first walked in.
  
  
• When not writing or looking after her children, JKR reads or sleeps.
  
  
• If she can't come up with a new name while she's writing, she types in an "X" and fills in the name later.
  
  
• She is happy with the films. Azkaban is her favorite so far.
  
  
• "If you squeeze together Harry, Ron and Hermione… I find them quite easy to write, and I think that that is because they are a bit like different parts of my personality."
  
  
• "You have to be careful if you get friendly with me because you tend to turn up in my books, and if you offend me, you often turn up as a nasty character."
  
  
• "Wormtail was the most difficult [of the Marauder's names to come up with]. My sister loathes rats and her problem with them is their tails, so that is what gave me the idea."
  
  
• "I have loads of favourite characters. I really like Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and Dumbledore. I love writing Snape—even though he is not always the nicest person, he is really fun to write. I love writing Dudley. If I could meet anyone, I might choose Lupin. I really like him. My favourite new character is Luna—I am very fond of her."
  
  
• "My favourite books for younger people would be I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, which I really love, The Little White Horse, all the classic children’s books… I love E Nesbit — I think she is great and I identify with the way that she writes. Her children are very real children and she was quite a groundbreaker in her day. I also read a lot of adult books. The last novel that I read was Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone."
  
  
• "Usually when I am just over halfway I normally love [the book I'm writing], but by the time I finish it I completely despise it and think it is worthless rubbish. At the moment [15 Aug 04], I really like how the sixth book is going."
  
  
• Originally, Hermione had a younger muggle sister, but her existence didn't lend itself to the story, so she was written out.
  
  
• JKR is expecting a third child, due in 2005.  She does not anticipate any baby-related delays for the release of Book 6.
  
  
• In early versions of The Philosopher's Stone's first chapter, a character named Pyrites meets Sirius in front of the Potters' house, a muggle betrays the Potters, the Potters live on a remote island, and Hermione's father sees the explosion from the backfired AK on the mainland and finds their bodies when he goes to investigate.

• Mopsy the dog-lover was a batty old woman who took Sirius in during GoF, assuming him to be a stray.  She was later written out because she didn't contribute to the story.

• The mysterious Weasley cousin was to be named Mafalda (not "Icicle").  She was a highly obnoxious, gifted Slytherin that vexed the Weasleys endlessly and Hermione especially.  She was written out of GoF because Rita Skeeter ended up providing her narrative function.

• JKR is not fond of cats, but a ginger cat that frequented a square where she lunched endeared itself to her because of its disdainful, haughty attitude.

• JKR was a bit like Hermione in that she was a right little know-it-all.

• In early drafts, Nearly Headless Nick recited a poem that explained his botched beheading.  Her editors persuaded her to leave it out.  The poem is found at http://www.jkrowling.com/en/textonly/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=11

• Hermione's surname was "Puckle" in the planning stages; JKR abandoned it for something more dignified.

• The weasel (after whom the Weasleys are named) has a reputation for malevolence; JKR rejects this characterization.

• Red hair also has negative connotations, which JKR rejects.

• Ron wasn't originally supposed to be patterned after JKR's long-time friend, Sean, but he ended up acting a lot like him.

• Ninety percent of most characters' characteristics are imaginary, despite occasional aspects based on real people. One exeption is Gilderoy Lockhart, who is patterened after someone JKR knew; from her description, it's someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

• The members of the Irish Quidditch team are named after people JKR knows.

• The West Ham Football Club is the only soccer team mentioned, in honor of an old friend of JKR's who supports the team.