JKR and Natalie

[mgrantwich at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 22062

There's a story in the Toronto Globe and Mail today about Natalie 
McDonald, a young girl who died of leukemia in 1999 at the age of 
nine.  Here's the relevant part:

"Her parents are Valerie McDonald, 42, and Bruce Stratton, 41.  They 
live just off Bloor Street in downtown Toronto with their other two 
daughters and would probably even question whether that was Natalie's 
role.  To them, sitting on the hot veranda outside their bedroom, 
above their tree-lined street, she was just Natalie, no saint, for 
sure.

"She had a wicked stubborn streak," Ms. McDonald said.

She point-blank refused to speak to the doctors at the hospital and 
defiantly hung a sword on her intravenous rack, Mr. Stratton said, 
leafing through a collection of Natalie's intricate drawings.

In the two years since their daughter died, they have come to 
recognize that her life, her living and her death have left traces on 
people she never met.

J.K. Rowling is one. Ms. Rowling is the author of the four wildly 
successful Harry Potter novels, which tell the story of how a 
scrawny, mistreated orphan with a lightning-shaped scar learns magic, 
embraces life and conquers evil at Hogwarts, a boarding school for 
wizards.

Natalie, whose acute lymphoblastic leukemia was diagnosed the day 
before her seventh birthday, was a huge Harry fan. During the 
frightening treatments that followed, and their manifold 
complications, she had plenty of time to listen to the tales of the 
fearless wizard.

In fact, the stoic Natalie was such a Potter fan that her parents had 
the third book brought over by courier from England, because they did 
not know whether she would live until its release later in North 
America.

A friend of the family wrote to Ms. Rowling to explain Natalie's 
obsession and her approaching death. Ms. Rowling wrote back a lengthy 
letter telling the secrets of the Potter novels to come. It arrived 
two days after Natalie died.

Ms. Rowling didn't give up. She and Natalie's mother began to 
exchange letters. They became fast friends. And last summer while Ms. 
McDonald was in London riding the tube and voraciously consuming the 
fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, there was Natalie 
on page 159. Ms. Rowling inserted her as a new student arriving at 
Hogwarts and being sorted into one of the school's four houses.

Natalie drew Gryffindor, the same house as Harry. That's the ultimate 
accolade for a Potter fan.

"It was kind of a magical thing that happened in the year after 
Natalie died," Ms. McDonald said."