Canon summaries posted

The canon summaries for the last several interviews have been posted on the 2007 listing over on Accio Quote!

The big news today is that the third trailer for the December 30 ITV1 documentary contains information on the second generation of Harry's friends and their families. All three trailers are available on The Leaky Cauldron's YouTube page, and Jo's diagrams of the families is above.

Update: The door on Jo's Website is open with the drawing of the tree with additional information on Draco's family.

New JKR feature in Time Magazine

Time Magazine has announced that author J.K. Rowling was a runner-up for the 2007 "Person of the Year." The current issue of the news magazine has a lengthy article and Jo's answers to ten questions! So here is the new quotage and canon:

"Runner-up: J.K. Rowling" by Nancy Gibbs

• 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."

Rowling Answers 10 Questions About Harry

• JKR chose the people who came to walk with Harry in the forest as he was going to his death 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 repeats her earlier assertion that Ron's adult career was working at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, where he "does very well."
• Tonks was a Hufflepuff.

Roonwit's list of new canon

Roonwit has made a summary of the new canon in the PotterCast interview! Here it is for your reading pleasure...

Rowling on PotterCast!
The first part of Jo's PotterCast appearance in now up. There are summaries of what was said below. There are of course SPOILERS included.

• Helga Hufflepuff gave the Hogwarts House Elves good working conditions (which was the moral thing to do at that time).
• In The Tales of Beedle the Bard
  • The Wizard and the Hopping Pot - the moral is to teach young witches and wizards to use magic altruistically
  • The Fountain of Fair Fortune - (her favourite) about the qualities you need to achieve your heart's desire (magic isn't the best option).
  • The Warlock's Hairy Heart - A dark, gothic tale. Voldemort would have done well to know this one before starting his reign of terror.
  • Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump - (a stupid title) one witch's revenge on muggle persecution.
• Beedle the Bard was originally invisaged 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 Fantastic Beasts].
• 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 they 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 Abbott 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 Deathly Hallows because ultimately her heart was bigger than her brain; she isn't naturally drawn to battle.
• Jo was sad that she wasn't going to write a Hogwarts graduation scene.

NYC Sweepstakes Reading Canon Summaries

I've been waiting for a full transcript from Leaky, but want to post this now. I figure I can add to it later. These summaries are actually based upon four sources: TLC, HPANA, as well as Eldritchhobbit’s and iamstarmoms LiveJournals. All were present at the reading.

• Neville married Hannah Abbott, who eventually became the landlady at The Leaky Cauldron. His students think this is cool.
• Molly was the one to defeat Bellatrix because Jo wanted Molly to have a chance to show how powerful she is, and because she found it satisfying to create a face-off between unhealthy obsessive love and strong maternal love.
• Jo decided not to kill Arthur Weasley in Book 5 so that Ron wouldn't have to grow up as quickly.
• The orphaning of Teddy Lupin brought the series full circle, though Harry was a much better godfather than Sirius.
• Jo says (tongue in cheek) that Aberforth's inappropriate goat charm had to do with keeping it clean or its curly horns.
• Dumbledore was gay; he fell in love with Gellert Grindelwald but was "terribly let down by him" when he realized what he was capable of.
• Parseltongue is not a language that people can learn. Ron really only memorized the sound of one word ("open").
• Dumbledore’s first letter to Petunia (she was 12-ish) was very kind and explained why he couldn’t let her become part of the Wizarding world and join her sister at Hogwarts. His 1981 letter reminded her of her wish, appealed to her sense of fair play, and asked her to take care of Harry.
• Petunia desperately wanted to be a part of the Wizarding world and hated that "Lily had what she couldn't have."
• What Petunia almost said when Harry left Privet Drive for the last time was " I do know what you're up against and I hope it's OK." But she couldn't say it because she was too hardened by pretending not to care for so long.
• Harry's Horcrux was not destroyed by the basilisk poison in book2 because the poison's damage was stopped in time by Fawkes' tears.
• Dumbledore worried that Harry would give in to his "reckless" impulses and seek the Deathly Hallows so he gave the book with the clues to cautious Hermione.
  
• When Harry decided not to seek the Hallows after Dobby died it scared him because it was the first time he had decided not to act.
  
• JKR: Portraits can "only move between portraits in the same building” or other places where the same portrait exists.
• The parallels between Voldemort's goals and methods and those of the Nazi Regime were deliberate, but there are also parallels to regimes that exist today.
• JKR: "The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry.... You should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth."
• There is no magic involved in life debts.
  
• After Book 7, Draco Malfoy goes back to "being an improved version of what he was but we shouldn't expect him to be a really great guy any time soon."
• James, Lily and Sirius became full time members of the Order of the Phoenix after leaving Hogwarts and did not have regular jobs. They lived off of James's money.
  
• The Potters did not go into hiding until Lily became pregnant.
  
• Lupin was "unemployable" when he left Hogwarts.
• Voldemort's first rise to power did not go as far as the second one did because he was not able to infiltrate the Ministry the first time.
• Hagrid never married. Mme. Maxime was too sophisticated for him, and there weren't many other giantesses around.
• Severus Snape's portrait does indeed hang in the Headmaster's office. Harry had a role in making sure that Snape's abdication did not effect his place there.
  
• Headmaster portraits don't appear immediately; the person needs to be dead.
  
• Jo was surprised that no one had ever asked her what Dumbledore’s wand was made of.