How J.K. Rowling Has Tweaked With Her Own Harry Potter Canon – To The Delight (And Disdain!) of Fans
With the promise of new Harry Potter material always comes the dread of how it'll affect that already established universe.
Now that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is about to be released promising a whole lot of information that may change how we perceive the Wizarding World, it's time to take a look at how author J.K Rowling has messed with her own canon.
Whether through interviews, Twitter or Pottermore, Rowling has been releasing tidbits of information not included in the books since the last one came out. Below we round up the four major ways she has altered Potter canon.
1. When she launched Pottermore.
Not a lot needs to be said about this one. The site that promised so much more for Potter fans ended up being a huge disappointment to some.
Pottermore was Rowling's answer to fans demanding more material. It launched in 2011 – four years after the last book came out in 2007 – and it promised to be and interactive way for fans to consumer the books. Users go through the books chapter by chapter as "explore" illustrations based on the narrative.
Arguably, however, the coolest things about the site are the new stories Rowling releases through it that shine a light on the less developed parts of the wizarding community.
One of the first ones released through the site (after users had to unlock it by going through each chapter) was Professor Minerva McGonagall's backstory. As a fan-favorite character, many were thrilled to read about her life before Harry stepped into her class for the first time.
The stories kept coming, each slightly altering the perception of characters and giving more details than fans may have wanted to know.
2. When she started tweeting up a storm.
It didn't seem like Rowling would like twitter at first. She tweeted only a handful of times the first few years she was on the site and they were all mostly about how she was too busy writing to tweet.
But now any given day brings the possibility of Rowling tweeting new details about the characters that filled the pages of a generation's childhood.
Details revealed have ranged from Harry's first son James being sorted in Gryffindor to the moment she decided Remus Lupin would die in the Battle of Hogwarts.
3. When she revealed Dumbledore is gay.
This was the first indication that Rowling wasn't afraid to mess with the way fans looked at characters. Revealed to a New York crowd in the middle of a Q&A session, Rowling has since stood by her belief that Hogwart's most beloved Headmaster was gay.
4. When she also revealed that she regretted Ron and Hermione ending up together.
This one is the one that hurts. In a 2014 interview conducted by Emma Watson for Wonderland, the author that made hearts soar when Ron and Hermione finally got together at the end of the book subsequently crushed them.
She told Watson that she regretted pairing the two up, realizing that Hermione would've been better off with Harry instead.
"I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment," Rowling said in the interview. "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."
"I know, I'm sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that," Rowling went on. "It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility."
