• Nearly Headless Nick's last name is De Mimsy-Porpington.
• The happiest people don't become ghosts.
• What Harry's parents did is important to the later plot.
• Marcus Flint, Slytherin Quidditch captain, had to repeat a year at Hogwarts.
• JKR: "Gnomes eat the roots of your plants, and make little heaps of earth, like moles do. They are also a bit of a giveaway that wizards live in a house."
• The MOM does not find out which children are magic. Instead, there is a magic quill in Hogwarts that records the birth of a magical child, and McGonagall checks it every year and sends owls to those magical children who are turning 11.
• Azkaban is in the North Sea.

• Rowling will never tackle issues such as teenage pregnancy or hard drugs in Harry Potter.

• Dementors are a personification of depression.

• Aunt Marge was inspired by Rowling’s Grandmother, Frieda, who was illegitimate and born of Scottish parents. She was abandoned in a London nursing home and adopted.

• Fan theories: "children are reading them 12 times, or whatever it might be, and they really are starting to know the way my mind works."
• Fan theories: "[m]ostly what's happened is that people have put together something I've said, something they like to think I said, something someone else said - which is completely false - and drawn completely the wrong conclusions."
• Fan theories: "But no one yet has guessed what's going to happen or come anywhere close in fact."
• Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does.
• In Book 4, Harry, Ron and Hermione have specific issues they need to work through. "For Harry that's facing up to his fame, really facing up to it for the first time because he's been put into this situation where he will, for the first time, really get the weight of outside interest. So that's scary." […] "Ron has to deal with his jealousy - he's made friends with the most famous boy in his year and that's not easy, it's not easy to be in that situation. And Hermione gets a political conscience."
• Book Four is a very, very, VERY important book. It is literally the "central" book. It is the heart of the series and it is pivotal.
• There was originally a Weasley cousin in book four, but he/she had to be pulled because of plot holes.
• The series' plot is "quite intricate."
• Hermione will lighten up after book 4.
• "Now, can I ask you: are there any special wizarding powers in your world that depend on the wizard using their eyes to do something? Bit like..."
  "Why do you want to know this?"
  "I just vaguely wondered."
  "Why?"
  "Well because everyone always goes on about how Harry's got Lily Potter's eyes." "Aren't you smart? There is something, maybe, coming about that. I'm going to say no more, very clever."
• "And I'm going to ask one other question which you'll say isn't clever at all. The significance of the place where Harry and his parents lived, the first name — Godric Gryffindor."
  "Very good, you're a bit good you are, aren't you?"
  "Thank you."
  "I'm impressed. My editor didn't notice, I said to her haven't you noticed any connection between where Harry's parents were born, not born, where they lived, and one of the Hogwarts houses and she's sitting there going erm... I'm not being rude about Emma she's a brilliant editor, the best I've ever [had]. But no she didn't pick that up either. You're a bit good you are."

Rowling knew obsessive people would enjoy the books.
Rowling hints that snake folklore may provide clues to book 7.

• No magic power can resurrect a truly dead person.

The hype surrounding the fourth Harry Potter book belies the fact that Joanne Rowling had some of her blackest moments writing it - and that the pressure was self-imposed; a kind of magic
The Herald (Glasgow)

• Death is not reversible, even in the Wizarding World, though in Book 7 "you'll see just how close you can get to the dead."
• Snape is a compendium of all the bullying teachers she ever encountered.
• Jo had to remove a chess scene from Book 1 that featured Ron winning by using "a particularly violent bishop."

• American wizards have their own wizarding school; they cannot attend Hogwarts because it just serves Britain and Ireland.
• Muggles can't see Hogwarts; they "see a ruin with a sign saying it's unsafe. . .they mustn't enter."
• Hagrid can legally do magic again since he became a teacher, but he will always be a bit inept.
• Wizards need money because "there is legislation about what you can conjure and what you can't. Something that you conjure out of thin air will not last."
• "The five years I spent on HP and the Philosopher's Stone were spent constructing The Rules. I had to lay down all my parameters. The most important thing to decide when you're creating a fantasy world is what the characters CAN'T do."
• Book 4 is so long because she realized partway through writing it that there was "a big hole in the middle of the plot and I had to go back and unpick and redo." She won't tell us what the flaw was.
• Harry is particularly talented in Defence against the Dark Arts, the one area (well, besides Quidditch) where he is better than Hermione.
• JKR does not believe in witchcraft.
• Hogwarts teachers do not stay at Hogwarts over the holidays. Only Filch stays.

• Dumbledore is the "epitome of goodness."
• People love Ron, for example. Kids think you're going to knock off Ron because he's the best friend.
  JKR: "Kids do, exactly, because they're sharp and they've seen so many films where the hero's best friend gets it. So they think I'm going to make it personal by killing Ron. But maybe that's a double bluff…" (Laughs)
• JKR: Harry was very well protected until the end of book four, which is the end of an era for him.
• About S.P.E.W.: Hermione thinks helping people is easy, but "she blunders towards the very people she's trying to help." Jo and her sister went through a stage like this.
• JKR: Voldemort "takes what he perceives to be a defect in himself, in other words the non-purity of his blood, and he projects it onto others [...] and attempts to exterminate in them what he hates in himself."
• Dealing with death and facing up to death are "strong central themes" in the books.

• The driver and the conductor of the Knight Bus ('Ernie' and 'Stanley') were named for Rowling's grandfathers. p.12
• Graveyards "are a great source for names." p.15
• One of the influences for Snape was a "scary" teacher she had when she was 9 years old (Tutshill, near Chepstow, South Wales). p.17
• As a teacher, the "worst, shabbiest thing you can do" is to bully children (draws parallel to Snape). p.21
• The characters she created the very first day were Harry, Ron, Nearly Headless Nick, Hagrid and Peeves, then she developed Hogwarts.p.37-8
• JK envisioned Hogwarts as a "place of great order, but immense danger, with children who had skills with which they could overwhelm their teachers."p.38 Hogwarts
• Initially there were only seven subjects to be studied at Hogwarts. p.39
• Professor Lupin is a "damaged person, literally and metaphorically. [....] His being a werewolf is really a metaphor for people's reactions to illness and disability." p. 40
• JK has worked out Sirius' childhood in detail. p.40
• JK wrote Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire's 9th chapter 13 times. p.88

• JKR: "Bigotry is probably the thing I detest most. All forms of intolerance, the whole idea of "that which is different from me is necessary evil." I really like to explore the idea that difference is equal and good. But there's another idea that I like to explore, too. Oppressed groups are not, generally speaking, people who stand firmly together — no, sadly, they kind of subdivide among themselves and fight like hell. That's human nature, so that's what you see here. This world of wizards and witches, they're already ostracized, and then within themselves, they've formed a loathsome pecking order."
• The Goblet of Fire was originally going to be called "The Doomspell Tournament" or "The Triwizard tournament." JKR chose ''Goblet of Fire'' "because it's got that kind of 'cup of destiny' feel about it, which is the theme of the book."
• JKR characterizes Voldemort as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering and Wormtail as somone "who out of cowardice will stand in the shadow of the strongest person."
• JKR: "What's very important for me is when Dumbledore says that you have to choose between what is right and what is easy. This is the setup for the next three books. All of them are going to have to choose, because what is easy is often not right."
• The idea of Harry saving Cedric's body came from the Hector-Patroclus-Achilles triangle in The Illiad.

• 'Hedwig' was a saint, ‘Dumbledore' was an old English word for bumblebee and ‘Snape' is an English village.

• Voldemort being a relative of Harry's would be a bit "Star Wars"
• JK's animagus form would be an Otter [this will become relevant in a later interview]
• Witches and wizards don't have to go muggle school before Hogwarts.
• Lily Potter's maiden name was Evans, and she was in Gryffindor (naturally).
• Harry's middle name is James, after his Dad.
• Is there something more to the cats appearing in the books than first meets the eye? (i.e. Mrs. Figg's cats, Crookshanks, Prof. McGonagall as a cat, etc.)
  JKR: Ooooo, another good question. Let's see what I can tell you without giving anything away....erm....no, can't do it, sorry.
• The Dursleys explained away Dudley's pig tail by telling staff at a private hospital it was a wart that had grown out of control.
• Lupin didn't turn into a Werewolf until exiting the Shrieking Shack because the moon wasn't up when he entered into it.
• There are about a thousand students at Hogwarts.
• Under her "gruff" exterior, Prof. McGonagall is an old softie, really.
• McGonagall is 70, and Dumbledore is 150. Wizards have a longer life expectancy than muggles.
• James Potter was a chaser on the Quidditch team.

• Goblins manage to get muggle money back into circulation after muggles have changed it into wizard money at Gringotts. (They are like "fences" -- British and American slang).
• JKR doesn't have a map of Hogwarts because "stuff just moves too much." But she does have a list of what floor everything is on.
• James inherited plenty of money, so he didn't need a well-paid profession.
• The animal one turns into as an animagi reflects your personality.
• Hermione's birthday is 19th September.
• Why did Dumbledore have a look of triumph in his eyes at the end of book four?
  JKR: "Good question…excellent, in fact, and like all the best questions I get asked, I can't answer it! Because it would give too much away. However, well-spotted. Have fun guessing…someone's bound to get it right!"
• James inherited the invisibility cloak from his father.
• Why did you make Quirrell the bad guy instead of Snape?
  JKR: "Because I know all about Snape, and he wasn't about to put on a turban."
• Fleur's name means "flower of the court".
• Will Harry Time travel again?
  JKR: "Not telling!"

• Susan Bones' grandparents were killed by Voldmort.
• Riddle was lying when he said that Hagrid had raised werewolf cubs under his bed
• Is it just me, or was something going on between Ron and Hermione during the last half of Book 4?
  JKR: "yes, something's 'going on'... but Ron doesn't realise it yet... typical boy."
• Why does Professor Dumbledore allow Professor Snape to be so nasty to the students (especially to Harry, Hermione, and Neville)? Dumbledore believes there are all sorts of lessons in life... horrible teachers like Snape are one of them!
• Hagrid was in Gryffindor.
• Professor Flitwick is head of Ravenclaw house.
• Did Harry ever use magic on Dudley in the real world? JKR: Not so far (hint).

• In Europe, people used to believe that if you cut the hand off a hanged man, it would make a perpetual torch that gave light only to the holder.

• There's stuff coming with the Dursleys that people might not expect.

• On the theme of tolerance in the books: "One way to learn tolerance is to take the time to really understand other people's motives. Yes, you're right. Harry is often given an erroneous first impression of someone and he has to learn to look beneath the surface. When you look beneath the surface he has sometimes found that he is being fooled by people. And on other occasions he has found very nice surprises."

• Dementors don't breed, but grow like fungus where there is decay.

• Book 1 is purposefully fairly gentle, because Harry is very protected when he enters the world.
• JKR on Voldemort and Cedric's death: "We really are talking about someone who is incredibly power hungry. Racist, really. And what do those kinds of people do? They treat human life so lightly. I wanted to be accurate in that sense. My editor was shocked by the way the character was killed, which was very dismissive. That was entirely deliberate."
• JKR: "I do have a real problem with gratuitous violence."
• JKR: "It's great to hear feedback from the kids. Mostly they are really worried about Ron. As if I'm going to kill Harry's best friend."
• JKR: "What I find interesting is only once has anyone said to me, "Don't kill Hermione and that was after a reading when I said no one's ever worried about her.... They see her as someone who is not vulnerable, but I see her as someone who does have quite a lot of vulnerability in her personality."

• Natalie McDonald is the only real person to be mentioned in the novels. (see interview for whole story).

• JKR: "Hermione gave me a lot of trouble!" laughed Rowling. "She was really misbehaving. She developed this big political conscience about the House elves. Well, she wanted to go her own way, and for two chapters, she just went wandering off. I just let her do it and then I scrapped two chapters and kept a few bits. That I liked. That's the most trouble anyone's ever given me, but it was fun so I gave her her head."
• JKR: "You should keep an eye on Dudley. It's probably too late for Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. I feel sorry for Dudley. I might joke about him, but I feel truly sorry for him because I see him as just as abused as Harry."

• JKR: "I love a good whodunnit and my passion is plot construction. Readers loved to be tricked, but not conned."
• "The best twist ever in literature is in Jane Austen's Emma. To me she is the target of perfection at which we shoot in vain."
• Harry's glasses are "the clue to his vulnerability."