Life after Deathly Hallows
2007-07-30 18:49
London - Just because JK Rowling has stopped writing about Harry Potter and his friends and foes doesn't mean she's stopped thinking about them.
On Monday, she told the series fans what she thinks happened to many of the book's characters after the final instalment.
In a 90-minute live web chat, she fielded some of the approximately 120 000 questions submitted by devotees. It was her first public comment since the last book in the series debuted on July 21.
Rowling said she was elated to share with fans the secrets she'd been harbouring since she conjured up the idea for the boy wizard during a train journey across England in 1990.
"It is great to be able to do this at last," Rowling said. "I've looked forward to it for so long!"
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the record-breaking series, sold more than 10 million copies in its first weekend.
In the novel - which centres on Harry's journey to kill Lord Voldemort, the most powerful dark wizard of all time - the boy wizard learns of three powerful magical objects called the Deathly Hallows that, when combined, will make their owner the Master of Death, meaning he or she accepts mortality without fear.
Rowling said in the online chat the Hallows were in part inspired by The Pardoner's Tale, one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales about greed and death.
Rowling shared with fans, many of whom said they'd read the final book several times in the past week, where she imagines their favourite wizards and witches went after the series' conclusion.
Spoiler alert: The reader who doesn't want to know how the book turned out should stop reading here.
Rowling said the world was a sunnier, happier place after the seventh book and the death of Voldemort.
Harry Potter, who always voiced a desire to become an Auror, was named head of the Auror Department under the new wizarding government headed by his friend and ally, Kingsley Shacklebolt.
His wife, Ginny Weasley, stuck with her athletic career, playing for the Holyhead Harpies, the all-female Quidditch team.
Eventually, Ginny left the team to raise their three children - James, Albus, and Lily - while writing as the senior Quidditch correspondent for the wizarding newspaper, the Daily Prophet.
Harry's best friend Ron Weasley joined his brother, George, as a partner at their successful joke shop Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.
Hermione Granger, Ron's wife and the third leg of the series' dark wizard fighting trio, furthered the rights of subjugated creatures, such as house-elves, in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures before joining magical law enforcement squad. The couple had two children - Rose and Hugo.
'An incredible journey'
Luna Lovegood, Harry's airily distracted friend with a love for imaginary animals who joins the fight against Voldemort in the Order of the Phoenix, becomes a famous wizarding naturalist who eventually marries the grandson of Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
And what Muggle, or non-Wizarding, song would have been played at the funeral of Albus Dumbledore, the most brilliant and talented wizard the world had ever known?
"Surely I did it my way by Frank Sinatra," Rowling told her fans.
As the chat wrapped up, Rowling thanked readers for their loyalty to the series.
"What can I say? Thank you so much for sticking with me, and with Harry, for so long. You have made this an incredible journey for Harry's author."
- AP