List of new canon from PotterCast interviews

I posted this last night to Accio Quote, and figured it would be of interest here too…

PotterCast 130 (December 17, 2007)
text | audio

• Helga Hufflepuff gave the House-elves at Hogwarts “good conditions of work.” Her intent wasn’t to be activist, merely to be humane.
• The Beedle the Bard story “Wizard and the Hopping Pot” was used “to teach young wizards and witches that they should be using their magic altruistically.”
• The Beedle the Bard story “Fountain of Fair Fortune” taught wizarding children that “magic ultimately is not the best weapon” to achieve your heart’s desire.
• Originally Beedle the Bard was to be around 30 tales, but then Jo got the idea to hand write them and she did just the five.
• Jo chose “horcruxes” as a plural for Horcrux because Jo didn’t want too many words ending in r-i.
• Herpo the Foul created the first Horcrux, but Jo won’t say how, other than that it is a series of actions.
• Jo’s encyclopedia may not be published for ten years.
• Jo named John Dawlish for John Noe. Dawlish had been a powerful Auror, but was weakened by the time Augusta Longbottom laid into him.
• Augusta Longbottom was a “powerful witch.”
• Attitudes toward homosexuality in the Wizarding world are pretty similar to ours. People like Malfoy were more interested in someone’s blood status than their love life.
• JKR: “Dumbledore, who was the great defender of Love, and who sincerely believed that Love was the greatest, most powerful, force in the universe, was himself made a fool of by Love.”
• Grindelwald was Dumbledore’s “dark twin.”
• There is no romantic backstory for Madam Hooch.
• Harry was technically NOT a Horcrux because there was no intent to create one. The piece of Voldemort’s soul did not make Harry “evil” or “contaminated.”
• JKR: “The only time he ever felt it [Harry’s Horcrux] stirring and moving was in Order of the Phoenix, when he himself goes through a very dark time” and the piece of soul enjoyed it and fed off of it.
• The Sorting Hat detected the piece of Voldemort’s soul within Harry.
• Official definition of a Horcrux: “the receptacle is prepared by dark magic to become the receptacle of a fragmented piece of soul and that that piece of soul deliberately detached from the Master Soul to act as a future safeguard or anchor to life and to safeguard against death.”
• “In essence divided,” the scene in Dumbledore’s office where he watches a snake divide, was when the Headmaster was figuring out about the Horcruxes.
• Dumbledore suspected multiple Horcruxes because Voldemort treated the diary Horcrux so “casually.”
• Neville was born “hours” before Harry.
• Neville could have done what Harry did too.
• Neville’s family “just wanted him to match up” but it was “an impossible standard.”
• Alice and Frank Longbottom earned Voldemort’s ire because they were such “efficient” Aurors, and “were responsible for a lot of captures and arrests and imprisonments.”
• Voldemort asked Lily and James if they would join the Death Eaters, but they turned him down.
• Dumbledore knew about the attack on Godric’s Hollow because he had put a charm on the house.
• Jo isn’t sure how to explain Hagrid and Harry’s missing 24 hours after James and Lily were killed.
• Jo always thought of Hannah Abbott as being pureblood, but this contradicts her “cornerstone” notebook (visible to fans in “Harry Potter and Me” video). So to compromise, Jo says Hannah is Half-blood.
• Jo created her website because people wanted a fan club, but Jo wanted to do something that was free.
• There will be no more WOMBATs; they were created when Jo was advised not to publish bits of Book 7 on her website.
• Hermione went back to Hogwarts to take her seventh year and her NEWTs.
• Kinglsey recruited Ron, Neville, Harry to be Aurors; Ron and Harry never went back to Hogwarts to graduate.
• Hermione “had a bigger heart than she had a brain.”

PotterCast 131 (December 24, 2007)
text | audio

• Pansy Parkinson is the “anti-Hermione,” the personification of all the girls who teased Jo in school.
• Draco married Astoria Greengrass, the younger sister of Daphne. Astoria was two years behind Draco at Hogwarts.
• The Love Room in the Department of Mysteries contains a fountain in the center of the room full of a powerful love potion. Wizards and witches take the potion to study its effects.
• One “thread” in the books is what love does to people. It can make people heroic (Lily, Harry, Neville), it can also lead them into foolishness and evil (Dumbledore and Bellatrix).
• Bellatrix was obsessively in love with Voldemort.
• Not all Slytherins are bad.
• Jo is very involved in the planning of the theme park. It will have the “Jo touch.”
• Florean Fortescue was killed; there was more to him than was revealed in the books.
• Hagrid did not create Thestrals, he only bred the ones living at Hogwarts. He did breed the Skrewts.
• Wands are “quasi-sentient” because they carry so much magic.
• Wands they develop an affinity (“loyalty”) for the wizards who bear them. Disarming someone may not affect this, but if won in a duel the wand will switch allegiance. The exception is the Elder Wand which “knows no loyalty except to strength.”
• Voldemort confused “being prepared to murder with strength.”