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Reply 74: Hogwarts, Hogwarts, and more Hogwarts
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did you like the Last chapter?
  Yes
  No
  I liked the battle of Hogwarts better
  I wish it had been longer
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Kisa_Hiroshi

PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 3:29 pm
Since Jo Rowling has published the last of a great seires, I tought we could disscuss everything that she has talked about since the book came out. Everything from Longbottom marrying Hanah Abott, to Dumbledore being gay. Just anything you owuld like to say on anything that has come out, or what you thought of the epoligue.  
PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:21 am
-Didn't pay much attention to the epilogue, it royally sucked in my opinion. No actual resolution or w/e between Harry & Draco just a single damn nod(THAT really ruined it for me, big H/D fan, sorry rolleyes ) and the naming of kids was completely unoriginal, like mixing severus & dumbledore??

-Though I was surprised when I heard about Dumbledore being gay, I can kind of see it in the books and have no problem with it.

-I was really disappointed that Draco wasn't much of a role in this one since he was so big in the 6th book, Draco's my fav character and it feels like he was completely pushed aside in this one domokun

-I did like how Harry played dead though, I'll give him credit for that

Need to reread the book for more rants *lol*
 

Nakia-Kai


Kisa_Hiroshi

PostPosted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 8:32 am
Here is just a list of all the information Jo has given us since 7, all of it from Lexicon (copy and pasted)
* The Battle of Hogwarts took place May 2nd
* Bill and Fleur's children were named Victoire, Dominique and Louis
* Charlie Weasley had no children and never married
* Percy and Audrey's children were named Molly and Lucy
* George married Angelina Johnson and their children were named Fred and Roxanne
* Luna and Rolf's children (twins!) were named Lorcan and Lysander
* Harry and Ginny's children's full names are James Sirius, Albus Severus and Lily Luna Potter
* Draco and Asteria child's full name is Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy
* Draco married Astoria Greengrass, 2 years younger than Draco and her sister Daphne.
* Jo loathes Pansy Parkinson who represents every girl who ever teased her.
* Jo promises to name the two missing Gryffindor girls in Harry's year, though they aren't important.
* A lot of the design of her website accurately mirrors real life (such as the mess beneath her desk and the dog barking), but not the wallpaper.
* She loved the Carnegie Hall event, with a great sense of liberation, because she could now answer questions and the questions are the crowds were excellent there. The books are so much part of her life because they are tied in with what was going on in her life at the time she wrote each bit of them.
* The love room is the place where they study what love means. It probably contains a fountain or well of a very powerful love potion, and the witches there take it and study the effects. It can raise people to the heights like Lily, or drag them into acts of foolishness or even evil, such as Bellatrix or Dumbledore (with Gellert).
* Bella was madly, romantically in love with Voldemort, and obsessed with him.
* Alan Rickman knew early on that Snape had been in love with Lily, so he could understand his bitterness towards Harry, who is living proof of Lily's preference for another man, but he was the only one who knew this for a very long time.
* Snape was correctly sorted into Slytherin, though he changes and evolves later.
* Slytherins aren't all bad. They have a more highly developed sense of self preservation, but Slughorn and other Slytherins do come back to fight in the final battle having got reinforcements first.
* Warner Bros. (who have the rights for the theme park) have involved Jo in the theme park, and she asked that the production designer on the films be involved in the design, because the film design mirrors what Jo imagines her world to be like. She expects it to be wonderful.
* Florean Fortescue was killed. There was a subplot relating to him and the Elder Wand that didn't make it into the books.
* The only breed that Hagrid ever created were Blast-ended Skrewts (not thestrals where he only bred the Hogwarts herd).
* Wands are quasi-sentient due to the magic they carry. The Elder Wand is the most dispassionate and ruthless of wands because it only considers strength and goes where the power is to the victor. Other wands develop an affinity and loyalty to their owners, but a wand won in a proper adult duel will at least partially switch allegiance to the winner, and so work well with the new owner. (In Duelling clubs there is no real significance attached to winning by either party).
* Jo has a lot of the next generation worked out; there is more on this in the forthcoming documentary.
* Although the bible verse "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" on James and Lily's grave is the "theme for the entire series," Jo is not trying to convert her readers to Christianity.
* "It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it's perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God."
* "I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form," she says. "And that includes in my own religion."
* On Wizard rock activism: "It's incredible, it's humbling, and it's uplifting to see people going out there and doing that in the name of your character," [...] "What did my books preach against throughout? Bigotry, violence, struggles for power, no matter what. All of these things are happening in Darfur. So they really couldn't have chosen a better cause."
* "He's [Harry's] still mine," she says. "Many people may feel that they own him. But he's a very real character to me, and no one's thought about him more than I have."
* On the epilogue: "I kept arguing that 'love is the most important force, love is the most important force.' So I wanted to show him loving. Sometimes it's dramatic: it means you lay down your life. But sometimes it means making sure someone's trunk is packed and hoping they'll be O.K. at school."
* Jo is currently writing two books: an adult novel and a "political fairy tale."
* "If, and it's a big if, I ever write an eighth book about the [wizarding ] world, I doubt that Harry would be the central character," she says. "I feel like I've already told his story. But these are big ifs. Let's give it 10 years and see how we feel then."
* The people who came to walk with Harry in the forest as he was going to his death were chosen because they were in some way were parental for him, or gave up their lives for him.
* Having Harry's blood in him was a bit of "goodness" for Voldemort, and gave him one last chance. If he had repented he would have been healed to a remarkable extent.
* Voldemort's Avada Kedavra succeeded in "killing the part of him that is not truly him, in other words, the fragment of Voldemort's own soul that is still clinging to his. The curse also disables Harry severely enough that he could have succumbed to death if he had chosen that path."
* Harry was right to feel repulsed by the baby-like remains of Voldemort's shattered soul.
* What did Dumbledore really see in the Mirror of Erised?
JKR: "His family, alive and whole and reconciled."
* Harry and Voldemort are distantly related through the Peverells, but you could say the same about Harry and most other wizarding familes.
* Draco Malfoy marries Astoria Greengrass, the "younger sister of the Greengrass family."
* Jo repeated her earlier assertion that Ron's adult career was working at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, where he "does very well."
* Tonks was a Hufflepuff.
* Hufflepuff gave the Hogwarts House Elves good working conditions (which was the moral thing to do at that time).
* In Beedle the Bard
o The Wizard and the Hopping Pot - the moral is to teach young witches and wizards to use magic altruistically
o The Fountain of Fair Fortune - (her favourite) about the qualities you need to achieve your heart's desire (magic isn't the best option).
o The Warlock's Hairy Heart - A dark, gothic tale. Voldemort would have done well to know this one before starting his reign of terror.
o Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump - (a stupid title) one witch's revenge on muggle persecution.
* Beedle the Bard was originally envisaged as about 30 tales but shrank to 5 when Jo realised she was going to hand write them.
* Horcri was considered as the plural to horcruxes, but Jo didn't want it too similar to inferi.
* The first Horcrux was probably made by Herpo the Foul [cf. the Basilisk entry in FB].
* The making of a horcrux is a dangerous and evil thing, one of two things Jo considers might be too horrible to explain (the other is how Wormtail fashioned the child-like body for Voldemort).
* John Dawlish was originally powerful, but was weakened by Dumbledore's and subsequent attacks on him. However Augusta Longbottom is still a formidable opponent.
* Being gay in the wizarding world is less of an issue (to those who care about such things) than blood status.
* Dumbledore, the great defender of the power of love, was made a fool by it. Grindelwald was almost his dark twin, Dumbledore wanted to believe he was good, and he appeared to offer a solution of the problem of caring for his family.
* Harry isn't really a horcrux, which needs to be made intentionally. He wasn't an evil object with curses on him, and wasn't contaminated by it except on occasions in OotP when it fed off the dark time Harry was going through.
* Harry's scar hurts when the soul piece in him is drawn back to the master piece of soul in Voldemort
* The scar is the wound through which the soul piece found its way into Harry.
* The two-headed smoke snake was Dumbledore detecting that Voldemort's soul had split like this.
* Harry had to die to get rid of the soul piece in him, being poisoned by the basilisk but cured wasn't enough.
* Neville is the-boy-it-could-have-been. Harry has an edge more talent, particularly an instinct of the right thing to do which makes him such a good auror, but Neville proves by the end of the books that he could also have done it had Voldemort chosen him.
* Bellatrix went after the Longbottoms because they were efficient and successful at their jobs as aurors.
* James and Lily were asked out of school to join Voldemort but rejected him.
* Dumbledore knew what happened at Godric's hollow because of an alarm spell on the house, but Jo couldn't remember if there was an explanation for the 24 hours until Harry arrived at Privet Drive.
* The Encyclopedia or "Scottish Book" is currently planned to be half facts and backstory within Harry's world, and half discarded plots and commentary on planning and what went in or not. Jo only wants to write it if it is amazing, she doesn't what to have to rush it out.
* Jo thinks of Hannah Abbot as pure blood (though she might be muggle born in Jo's notes.) She is landlady at The Leaky Cauldron.
* Jo was under pressure to do a fan club, but created her website as a better solution.
* There will be no more WOMBATs. She was told for legal reasons that it would be a bad idea to release snippets of information about DH, and saw the WOMBATs as a way of giving the fans something, though WOMBAT 3 had a lot of hints concealed within it. Jo might put up the answers.
* Harry and Ron didn't go back to school and were aurors, but Hermione did another year at Hogwarts to get her NEWTs. Kingsley wanted anyone in the Battle of Hogwarts on the right side, who was old enough, to help clean up the Ministry (including Ron, Neville and Harry).
* Hermione went with Harry and Ron through DH because ultimately her heart was bigger than her brain, but isn't naturally drawn to battle.
* Jo was sad that she wasn't going to write a Hogwarts graduation scene.
* House elf ownership is unlicensed. They live for an average of 200 years. Their loyalty is to their house more than its inhabitants. They can be ordered to kill themselves. They are powerful enough to override wizards' enchantments. They breed infrequently and only with their master's permission.
* There are no female centaurs.
* There are no male Veela.
* Hags have four toes on each foot, but are only able to do rudimentary magic.
* The Great Fire of London was started by a young Welsh Green Dragon being kept in a basement.
* The animal form of a patronus does not determine its strength.
* Muggle-born witches and wizards usually have an ancestor (possibly very distant) who was a witch or wizard.
* Muggles can't produce even elementary magic even if they have access to a wand and spell book.
* A secret task force of Wizard and Muggles helped the Allies to victory in the Second World War.
* Witches and Wizards live in every country in the world, but not every country has a wizarding school.
* The flying carpet trade is banned everywhere except the far East.
* Egypt hosts the world's largest centre of Alchemical studies.
* The age at which wizards can legally perform magic is 17 throughout the world.
* It is illegal to apparate between countries, but travel by portkey is allowed if both countries give permission.
* There is no wizard royalty.
* No authorization is required to send owl mail internationally.
* Foodstuffs can be increased, transfigured, summoned from a distance and magically cooked, but not conjured out of thin air, and some things can't be transfigured into food.
* It is impossible to transfigure animate objects into inanimate objects.
* Occlumency can't guard against possession.
* No spell can guard against Cruciatus Curse.
* A poison victim can be cured without the correct antidote, but curing a curse victim requires the correct counter-spell, and you need to know who or what a person or object was originally to un-transfigure them.
* The location and name of Hogwarts were chosen by Rowena Ravenclaw, who dreamed that a warty hog was leading her to the cliff by the lake.
* There wasn't a point at which Rowling decided that Dumbledore was gay; she gradually realized it "very early on" while she was writing the first book.
* Rowling "probably" won't write a prequel.
* JKR: "He [Dumbledore] is my character, and as my character I have the right to say what I say about him."
* Most of the tweaking of the epilogue was to remove information; the biggest change was the addition of information about Teddy Lupin.
* Rowling still plans on working on a Hogwarts encyclopedia, but not immediately.
* Hermione would read Margaret Atwood's books; Harry and Ron don't read much as adults.
* Neville is married to Hannah Abbott, the new landlady of the Leaky Cauldron making him extra cool with the students because he lives above the pub.
* Molly was the one to finish off Bellatrix to demonstrate her other talents, and to show the clash of loves, Bellatrix's obsession with Voldemort and Molly's maternal love.
* To an 8 year old questioner, she said that Aberforth's goat charm was to make a goat that was easy to keep clean with curly horns.
* Dumbledore is gay, and fell in love with Grindelwald, adding to his horror when Grindelwald later showed his true nature.
* Ron was able to duplicate the parseltongue word for "Open" after hearing Harry say it, but he wouldn't be able to speak to snakes.
* Dumbledore persuaded Petunia to take Harry in, by appealing to the part of her that had wanted to go to Hogwarts and be a part of the magical world and hated Lily unjustly because she couldn't.
* The horcrux part of Harry wasn't destroyed in Chamber of Secrets, because Fawkes healed Harry before the damage was irreparable.
* James supported Lupin financially, as he was unemployable. James, Lily, Sirius and Remus were full time Order fighters.
* Hagrid never married, and James and Lily went into hiding shortly after Lily became pregnant with Harry.
* She decided not to kill off Arthur in book 5, because it would have killed off a lot of Ron's humour, which comes from insensitivity and immaturity, and she didn't want him to grow up until the final book. She also wanted to finish with an orphan - Teddy - to mirror Harry.
* Jo married "Harry Potter", describing Harry as a really good and gutsy person.
* She also dated a few Ron Weasleys, describing Ron as very funny but insensitive, with a lot of immaturity, which is where a lot of the humour comes from. Also "He's not much fun to date, but he's great as a friend."
* Dudley and Harry exchanged Christmas cards, their children don't like each other very much, but their were some slightly awkward family get togthers.
* Harry and Ginny are real soul mates. They're both very strong and very passionate. That's their connection, and they're remarkable together.
* Ron and Hermione, however, are drawn to each other because they balance each other out. Hermione's got the sensitivity and maturity that's been left out of Ron, and Ron loosens up Hermione a bit, gets her to have some fun. They love each other and they bicker a bit, but they enjoy bickering, so we shouldn't worry about it.
* The first piece of literature that inspired Jo was The Wind in the Willows.
* Rowling wanted the books to show some of the evils of war: how "totally innocent people are slaughtered" and "that children lose their families."
* Cho Chang married a Muggle.
* Snape teaches Potions because Jo didn't do well in Chemistry and wanted revenge.
*JKR: "Dobbie's death woke Harry up to what he was doing" because it was so senseless. Rowling always knew how Dobby would die.
* Jo thought explicit references to Christianity early on in the story would make the ending too obvious.
* JKR: "Hogwarts is a multifaith school."
* The Matthew 6:19 and 1Corintians 15:26 quotations on his parents' gravestones were meant to symbolize "living beyond death. Living after death." They "sum up" the whole series.
* Harry's struggle with questions about the afterlife begins when Sirius dies.
* The two epigrams at the beginning of Book 7 ("The Libation Bearers" by Aeschylus and William Penn's "More Fruits of Solitude") had been planned since book 2 was published: "I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I'd cued up the ending perfectly.... They just say it all to me...."
* Harry's struggle with his beliefs about the afterlife mirrors her own.
* JKR: "Snape is vindictive, he's cruel. He's not a big man. But he loves. I like him, but I'd also like to slap him hard."
* JKR: "Although [Dumbledore] seems to be so benign for six books, he's quite a Machiavellian figure, really. He's been pulling a lot of strings. Harry has been his puppet."
* Jo is proud of the fact that many readers believed it was a real possibility that Harry would die because it means the books are "imbued with a sense of genuine mortality."
* Jo planned, very early on, the scene where Hagrid carries Harry out of the Forbidden Forest, believing him to be dead.
* Dumbledore learned, when he was 17, that his weakness and temptation is Power. "He recognized that he was not really to be trusted with power. And so he remained at Hogwarts."
* Jo says the Harry Potter series is a political metaphor.
* JKR: "My beliefs and my struggling with religious belief and so on I think is quite apparent in this book."
* Victoire, Bill and Fleur's eldest daughter, is Teddy Lupin's girlfriend.
* Jo says it was shown at the end of Book 7 that Voldemort had a chance for redemption " because he had taken into his body this-- this drop of hope or love (Harry's blood). So that meant that if he could have mustered the courage to repent, he would have been okay. But, of course, he wouldn't. And that's his choice."
* Kingsley becomes permanent Minister for Magic and reforms the Ministry after Voldemort's fall.
* Harry heads up the new Auror department for Kingsley.
* Hermione reforms house elf regulations before switching to Magical Law and getting rid of pro-pure-blood legislation.
* Ron joins George in Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes.
* Ginny plays for the Holyhead Harpies, before retiring to start a family and become senior Quidditch correspondent at the Daily Prophet.
* Luna becomes a magical naturalist and marries Rolf Scamander, the grandson of Newt.
* The Malfoys weaseled out of punishment because they helped Harry at the end.
* The dementors caused Dudley to see himself as he really was.
* The Hufflepuff common room is a cosy cellar near the kitchens, with tunnels and round doors for the domitories.
* No-one does magic late in life - Jo changed her mind after PoA.
* Snape is a flawed hero, cruel and bullying, but ultimately laying down his life for loyalty to what he loved.
* Umbridge was arrested and imprisoned for crimes against muggleborns.
* Quirrell had taught Muggle Studies before switching to DADA.
* Firenze was allowed back into his herd, when they were forced to acknowledge that he acted honourably.
* During the Book 7 epilogue, Hogwarts already had a new Headmaster because "McGonagall was really getting on a bit".
* There is a now a permanent Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. The jinx on the position was broken when Voldemort died. Jo could see Harry giving the "odd talk" on DADA.
* Mr. Weasley was the character who got a reprieve. Jo was planning to kill him off when she wrote her first drafts.
* Jo's favorite passage in all the books is in Chapter 34 of "Deathly Hallows", when Harry walks into the forest intending to sacrifice himself so that Voldemort will be defeated. "I didn't cry as I was writing [that chapter], but when I finished writing, I had an enormous explosion of emotion and I cried and cried and cried."
* Jo said the Epilogue was supposed to be a lot more detailed than what it turned out to be. It was even supposed to contain the names of the children born to the Weasley clan for the past 19 years. "But it didn't work very well as a piece of writing," she said. "It felt very much that I had crowbarred in every bit of information I could."
* Victoire, the girl who was snogging Teddy (Lupin and Tonks' son), is Bill and Fleur's eldest daughter.
* Harry and Ron are working as Aurors. Harry heads the Auror Department. "Harry and Ron utterly revolutionized the Auror Department. They are now the experts. It doesn't matter how old they are or what else they've done."
* Hermione is "pretty high up" in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
* Harry, Ron, and Hermione revolutionized the Ministry of Magic. It has now evolved into a "really good place to be".
* Luna is travelling the world, looking for "mad creatures". "She's a naturalist, whatever the wizarding equivalent of that is."
* Even though she has already said they won't be hooking up, Jo said that she felt "a bit of a pull" between Neville and Luna. She has decided to leave the question of their relationship open at the end of Book 7 because to the otherwise would "be too neat".
* Neville's parents never left St. Mungo's because the Dark Magic Bellatrix cast on them did permanent damage.
* Neville finds happiness in his position as a Herbology Professor at Hogwarts and in his Grandmother's acceptance of him as a gifted wizard.
* Trevor is just a toad.
* The time turners really were all smashed in the Ministry (she didn't want a Terminator like situation).  
PostPosted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 2:17 pm
Omg, thanks for a great list! x] These are veryveryvery interesting to know, though some facts are just randomly thrown in, like Draco's marriage to Astria Greengrass O.o

Oh well, the fanfiction possibilities.  

Riceycake

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74: Hogwarts, Hogwarts, and more Hogwarts

 
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