Harry Potter scribe JK Rowling has created
a wizarding world that has sparked the imaginations
of millions across the globe.
And while her accomplishments have made her
a very rich and powerful person, that doesn't
mean she lives entirely without regret.
To many fans, the decision to pair Ron Weasley
with Hermione Granger was a strange one.
Ron, the goofy sidekick, had almost nothing
in common with Hermione, whereas Harry always
recognized her status as the secret MVP of
the story’s central trio.
Sure, Ron had a few moments of bravery, and
there was that tenuous connection with her
being a muggle and his dad having a fascination
with the non-wizarding world, but please.
Even Rowling knows that Hermione and Harry
were the real endgame of the series.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Rowling
admitted:
"I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as
a form of wish fulfillment.
That's how it was conceived, really.
For reasons that have very little to do with
literature and far more to do with me clinging
to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione
ended up with Ron.
[...] It was a choice I made for very personal
reasons, not for reasons of credibility."
Of course, it’s possible that the personal
reason she's alluding to here is the fact
that Ron Weasley was based on a close childhood
friend of hers, while Hermione was based in
part upon herself.
“Mental, that one.
I’m telling you.”
In 2007, J.K.
Rowling revealed that Albus Dumbledore was
meant to be a gay character, even if it wasn't
completely spelled out in her books.
During a reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, she answered a fan question as to
whether Dumbledore had ever fallen in love,
saying:
"Dumbledore is gay, actually."
While the news was received warmly by the
crowd, she expressed some regret that she
hadn't been more clear about that before,
saying:
"I would have told you earlier if I knew it
would make you so happy."
The matter would become a point of contention
later on, however, when Dumbledore's sexuality
was again left ambiguous in Fantastic Beasts:
The Crimes of Grindelwald.
LGBTQ advocates were dismayed when director
David Yates revealed that the film would "not
explicitly" address his homosexuality.
Although Rowling still openly defended her
decision to make Dumbledore gay, she chose
to ignore those who criticized the film's
lack of attention to that detail.
For the third instalment in the franchise,
Yates has maintained that they will make Dumbledore's
romantic history with Grindelwald a little
more obvious.
Rowling fielded more public disappointment
over the fact that the cast for the first
Fantastic Beasts was predominantly white.
Producer David Heyman defended the film's
casting by explaining that the story's timeline
had a lot to do with the cast's whiteness,
pointing out to Entertainment Weekly that
1920s era New York was racially segregated.
He said:
“The wizarding world is a much more open
and tolerant society where people of color
and different ethnic backgrounds exist harmoniously
together."
Heyman also promised that the series would
have "people of color filling this world in
an organic way."
Rowling, meanwhile, simply denied that the
cast was all-white on Twitter and challenged
a fan to wait to see the movie before judging,
adding:
"It is a trilogy and all the characters have
not been revealed or cast yet."
The author faced further Fantastic Beasts
backlash when the character of Nagini, Voldemort’s
pet snake from the original series, was introduced
in The Crimes of Grindelwald as a maledictus,
played by South Korean actress Claudia Kim.
Rowling was accused of fabricating diversity
with the decision, which she fought back against
by pointing out that the word “Nagini”
comes from Indonesian mythology, and that
Indonesia has a significant Chinese population.
Still, as many suspected, the character came
through as something of a token inclusion
in the movie.
All of this comes on top of other long-running
Potter franchise controversies, such as the
issue of Jewish representation and varying
interpretations of Hermione's race.
It’s not hard to imagine that, given the
chance, she would have approached the diversity
of her characters a little differently.
Plenty of characters died in Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows, but one of the offings
that hurt the most was Fred Weasley, who was
killed in an explosion at the Battle of Hogwarts.
Fred had become a fan favorite, alongside
his twin brother George, thanks to his signature
cheery demeanor.
She would later apologize to fans for claiming
the fictional life of a character who was
so beloved by readers.
In 2015, she tweeted:
"Today I would just like to say: I'm really
sorry about Fred."
In 2016, Rowling returned to her tradition
of apologizing for a character's authorial
execution.
This time, she shone the spotlight on Remus
Lupin, the Hogwart’s Defense Against the
Dark Arts professor who also turned out to
be a werewolf.
It wasn't just Remus' death that hit so hard,
though.
He died shortly after his wife Tonks was also
killed, which meant that their newborn son
Teddy lost both his parents before he had
a chance to know them - just like Harry Potter
had so many years before.
Rowling issued a series of tweets apologizing
and explaining the need for Lupin's death,
writing:
"In the interests of total honesty I'd also
like to confess that I didn't decide to kill
Lupin until I wrote Order of the Phoenix.
Arthur lived, so Lupin had to die.
I'm sorry.
I didn't enjoy doing it.
The only time my editor ever saw me cry was
over the fate of Teddy."
To orphan one little wizard baby?
Cruel.
Two of them?
That’s just diabolical.
Whether or not Professor Severus Snape actually
redeemed himself at the end of Deathly Hallows
is up for debate.
Sure, he was working for the good guys all
along and only killed Dumbledore so that Draco
Malfoy wouldn't have to.
But he was pretty terrible to Harry from the
very start of his tenure at Hogwarts.
Making the generous assumption that he was
trying to teach Potter to toughen up in preparation
for his fateful confrontation with Lord Voldemort,
you can’t help but imagine some of that
was him projecting his pure acrimony for James
Potter onto the Boy Who Lived.
The fandom’s split opinion on Snape meant
that a good chunk of them would have been
happy if Rowling never apologized for his
death - which is why her 2017 commemoration
of the Battle of Hogwarts ended up a little
more timid than usual.
She tweeted:
"OK, here it is.
Please don't start flame wars over it, but
this year I'd like to apologise for killing
(whispers)…
Snape."
“After all this time?”
“Always.”
It's almost like she was apologizing for apologizing.
One character that Rowling managed to completely
redeem by the time the series ended was Dobby
the house elf.
When we first met him, he was a completely
irritating pest whose sole purpose was to
get Harry in trouble with the Dursleys.
By the end of the road, he was a sweet little
scamp who just wanted to be free so that he
could define his own loyalties.
While trying to rescue Harry and Griphook
from the Death Eaters, however, Dobby was
stabbed by Bellatrix Lestrange.
To make his death even more devastating, Harry
dug his grave by hand and inscribed it with
the words: "Here lies Dobby, a free elf."
Rowling memorialized him in her 2018 tribute,
despite the fact that he wasn't a part of
the legendary final battle, writing:
"It's that anniversary again.
This year, I apologise for killing someone
who didn't die during the #BattleofHogwarts,
but who laid down his life to save the people
who'd win it.
I refer, of course, to Dobby the house elf."
Another lamentation J.K.
Rowling has made about the Harry Potter series
is how certain characters' names are so commonly
mispronounced.
With Hermione Granger, for example, Rowling
had to pretty much spell it out in the text
once she discovered that fans were saying
her name incorrectly.
Rowling has since admitted that the scene
from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in
which Hermione tells Viktor Krum to say "her-my-oh-nee"
instead of "hermy-own" was also meant to be
instructional for readers, since the films
hadn't come out yet.
One name pronunciation that she never did
quite correct, however, was Lord Voldemort,
whose moniker most fans think is "vawl-duh-MORT."
Even the films adapted that bit of elocution.
“Voldemort.”
“Voldemort?”
“Shh.”
However, if Rowling had her way, fans would
never say the "T" in his name at all.
In 2015, she confirmed this fun fact about
the series, conceding:
"I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who pronounces
it that way."
One specific regret J.K.
Rowling has copped to is the type of dog bred
by the third book’s nasty Aunt Marge.
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,
Harry was introduced to Uncle Vernon's sister,
who often used canine-related theories and
phrases to analyze people.
“It’s all to do with the mother.
You see it all the time with dogs.
If there’s something wrong with the b----,
then there’s something wrong with the pup.”
Clearly, her relationship with her dogs was
significant to her character development.
However, Rowling later said she should not
have chosen bulldogs as her breed after all.
She wrote on Pottermore:
"I regret making Aunt Marge a breeder of bulldogs,
as I now know them to be a non-aggressive
breed.
My sister owns one and he's the most lovable,
affectionate dog you could hope to meet.
On the other hand, they do look grumpy, and
on appearance alone seemed to suit Aunt Marge."
There are some Harry Potter fan theories that
Rowling has shown some major support and respect
for - while others have been kindly dispelled
by the author as illegitimate.
Usually, Rowling is polite enough about putting
an idea to rest, like when she denied that
Ron is a younger time-travelling Dumbledore
and shut down the theory that Draco Malfoy
became a werewolf after being bitten by Fenrir
Greyback.
One theory that seems to get Rowling into
a tizzy, though, is the one that suggests
Dumbledore may have turned his phoenix Fawkes
into his own horcrux.
Admittedly, the supporting evidence for the
concept is pretty thin.
Basically, the idea is that if Voldemort could
store a piece of his existence in a snake,
a bird wouldn't be off the table either, and
Dumbledore may not have always been the benevolent
soul that we know him to be.
However, Rowling not only put the kibosh on
the idea, but also expressed personal offense
to it, writing:
"The idea that anybody believes this is strangely
upsetting to me."
By the end of the Harry Potter series, J.K.
Rowling had written a whopping 4,224 pages
about her magical realm - but there was still
one scene she couldn't quite squeeze into
the story.
In 2007, the author revealed that she wanted
to include a Hogwarts graduation scene in
Deathly Hallows to confirm that Hermione went
back to school and finished, while Harry,
Ron, Neville, and some others went straight
to work to clean up Voldemort’s mess in
the wizarding world.
She told fans on Pottercast:
"I felt a huge sadness that I wouldn't write
a graduation scene.
I felt sad that the book wasn't gonna end
with that feast scene, the graduation scene.
[...] A lot of people felt the epilogue was
too sentimental, I think to have a graduation
scene on top of what just happened would've
been an absurd bit of anti-climax."
Had the scene been included, fans would've
seen the trio ride the thestrals away from
Hogwarts to signify a fresh new start for
them as they passed over the water.
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