Rowling's Pottermore Notes

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

I'm not a member of Pottermore, so I'm glad that some bloggers have been collecting Rowling's notes from the site. The notes don't have that many surprises, but a few things did jump out at me.


According to one of the Slytherin Prefects, Merlin was a Slytherin. I'm hoping that we're supposed to take this tidbit with a grain of salt since I'm pretty sure that Merlin lived several centuries before Hogwarts was founded, even in the Potterverse.

In a 2007 web chat, Rowling said that Quirrell was previously the Muggle Studies professor, probably because fans had been asking how Percy had had him as a teacher before if the DADA professor changed every year. But she says nothing about him teaching Muggle Studies in his backstory on Pottermore. I suspect the truth may be that she didn't figure out the details of the DADA curse until after PS was published.

I think some of the most interesting new information comes from McGonagall's Backstory. Apparently, like Severus, Minerva had a muggle father. Her mother kept her wand locked away and didn't reveal to her husband that she was a witch until after Minerva was born. Also, I'm guessing that Rowling must have said something in the past about Minerva being around 70 years old, for most fans seemed to have believed that Minerva's years at Hogwarts had overlapped with Tom Riddle's. However, it now appears from her backstory on Pottermore that Minerva didn't start at Hogwarts until 1947, two years after Tom finished, for she started teaching at the school two years after she graduated, and we know from OotP that she started teaching in December of 1956.


In a note on the history of the Sorting Hat, Rowling writes:

The Sorting Hat is notorious for refusing to admit it has made a mistake in its sorting of a student. On those occasions when Slytherins behave altruistically or selflessly, when Ravenclaws flunk all their exams, when Hufflepuffs prove lazy yet academically gifted and when Gryffindors exhibit cowardice, the Hat steadfastly backs its original decision. On balance, however, the Hat has made remarkably few errors of judgement over the many centuries it has been at work.

So, in other words, Slytherins really are all evil? I think it's rather disturbing that this appears on an official fansite where all members are sorted by a personality quiz into one of the four houses, including Slytherin.

Comments

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

"Also interesting that apparently McGonagall was married at one point, but kept her own name being 'something of a feminist' - Rowling wading into new waters...?"

Honestly, Rowling has been touting her books as "feminist" literature for as long as they've been around. And then she goes and makes every female character play second fiddle to a male one, and the most powerful women in the series antagonists!

[oryx_leucoryx]

Indeed. Minerva needed Albus' tutoring to become an Animagus, James and Sirius managed on their own.

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

Heh, I guess I saw her as the type who wouldn't want to use the actual label 'feminist', like it would sound too man-hating or something!
I know she did that body image rant (the one 'for girls' about how females are responsible for each other's poor body image, and how 'well-adjusted' males are baffled at the depths of viciousness to which we'll sink...) and the closest she'd get to mentioning feminism was of course, the more negative term - she doesn't like 'Stupid Girls'.
Like, she obviously really did want to express that women should be more confident about their variety of shapes, and more concerned with personality over appearance, but being who she is, she couldn't express it without making it about men's opinions being the foremost issues, and how useless Hollywood (female, of course) celebrities are in comparison.