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JK Rowling Q&A session at Royal Albert Hall

June 28th, 2003

Stephen Fry:
What am I going to call you?

JK Rowling:
Jo

Stephen Fry:
Can we settle an important question? (JKR: yes) How do you pronounce your last name?

JK Rowling:
It is Row-ling. As in rolling pin. (mimics rolling action)

Stephen Fry:
So if any of you hear someone pronounce her name "Rohw-ling", you have my permission to hit them over the head with -- not with Order of the Phoenix, that would be cruel. Something smaller, like a fridge.

Stephen Fry:
We've got a lot of questions to get through, so let's hear our first question, which is from a young man not too far away, he's in Stevenage in Hertfordshire and his name is James Williams.

JAMES WILLIAMS:
What kind of books did you read as a child and did it inspire you to become a writer?

JK Rowling:
I would read absolutely anything at all. My favourite writers were E. Nesbit, C.S. Lewis and I used to read adult writers as well. I would read absolutely anything, the backs of cereal packets.

Stephen Fry:
One of the things I suppose a lot of people like to know about writers is a very basic question of what your average writing day is like? I'm sure there is no average writing day, but the may sound like silly questions but they're ones people like to know, like Do you use a computer? Or do you write with a pen? Do you drink coffee or tea? Do you listen to music whilst you write? Give us a rough example of your day?

JK Rowling:
Right, well my favourite way to write, used to be to go to cafés. I love doing that because I find that being surrounded by people even though I can't talk to them whilst I'm writing is very helpful because being a writer is a very, very lonely job, obviously. But these days I can't write in cafés because too many people come to me and go "Yuo're that woman, who writes that Harry Potter" so I write at home now and I write much more on the computer than I used to.

Stephen Fry:
And do you listen to music?

JK Rowling:
I never listen to music. I find music much too distracting.

Stephen Fry:
And do you drink tea or coffee?

JK Rowling:
I drink both of them, in excessive quantities.

Stephen Fry:
And again to be really dull, just to get the details out of the way… Do you start very early and write 'till very late. Is it regular?

JK Rowling:
Well I start off by taking my daughter to school and then I write 'till I'm so hungry I can't focus on the computer anymore and I go and have a sandwich, then I keep writing until Jessica comes home from school and then sometimes I'll do a bit in the evening.

Stephen Fry:
And after about a year or so…

JK Rowling:
After about a year or so finally think: "Ooh. I finally finished the book."

Stephen Fry:
Do you print it out as you go along and read it on paper?

JK Rowling:
I do. Wastes a lot of paper

Stephen Fry:
We now have a question from a Miss Anna Beatrice… She's all the way in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

ANNA BEATRICE:
Did you find it harder to write now that the whole world was waiting for the latest book in the Harry Potter series?

JK Rowling:
I don't think I did find it harder to write, but it can get a little bit scary being published these days. Look where we are (looks around Albert Hall) The first reading I ever did, there were two people who wandered into the basement of Waterstones by mistake and were too polite to leave when they saw someone was doing a reading and they had to get all the staff in the shop to come downstairs to bulk out the crowd a bit. and I was terrified. I was shaking so badly, I kept missing lines.

Stephen Fry:
And now when you go to a bookshop to do a signing, people dress up don't they?

JK Rowling:
They do dress up. The best one I ever saw was a woman in America who dressed up as the fat lady in a pink dress and she had hung a picture frame around herself. She looked fabulous

Stephen Fry:
So I know in America they are a bit more theatrical than we are about these things (British), you get boys dressed as Harry Potter and girls dressed as Hermione

JK Rowling:
Many boys dressed as Harry… And lately I've noticed people like dressing up as Draco a lot more, which I'm finding a little bit worrying. (To audience) I think you're all getting far too fond of Draco.

Stephen Fry:
Now we're going to go to Manchester in England where there is a question from Jess Wild.

JESS WILD:
What advice would you give to any kids who want to become authors?

(Stephen repeats question…again)

JK Rowling:
I always say the same thing, which is to read as much as you possibly can. Nothing will help you as much as reading and you'll go through a phase where you will imitate your favourite writers and that's fine because that's a learning experience too and you'll also have to accept that you are going to hate a lot of the things you write before you find you like something.

Stephen Fry:
There seem to be a lot of other popular children's writers at the moment… Are you a fan of Phillip Pullman?

JK Rowling:
Phillip Pullman is fantastic (pause) David Almond (pause) Jacqueline Wilson

Stephen Fry:
Lemony Snicket…

It's almost better than being called Mundungus

JK Rowling:
Mundungus for those that don't know means "tobacco," it's an old word for that and Mundungus is always smelling of his pipe and various other unsavoury things, so that's why he's called Mundungus.

Stephen Fry:
Now let's go six thousand miles to someone called Lily whose all the way in Seattle, Washington in America.

LILY:
Which character do you miss most when you finish writing the book?

JK Rowling:
I really miss all of them, but I suppose I'm going to have to say Harry because he is my hero and there is a lot of me in Harry.

Stephen Fry:
People sometimes ask me who my favourite character is in the reading of them and the answer is always Harry because you didn't choose to make it 'Anybody Else and the Order of the Phoenix' It's Harry's story and Harry's growth…

JK Rowling:
Exactly! It's Harry's journey and it's Harry's eyes from which you see the world and so he is obviously crucial to the story.

Stephen Fry:
Can you remind us how the whole thing popped into your head? It was on a train journey?

JK Rowling:
I was going on a train from Manchester to London and I was looking out of the window at some cows, I believe and I just thought: "Boy doesn't know he's a wizard - goes off to wizard school." I have no idea where it came from. I think the idea was floating along the train and looking for someone and my mind was vacant enough so it decided to zoom in there.

Stephen Fry:
And you played with the idea in your head…

JK Rowling:
Exactly! From that moment I thought: "Well why doesn't he realise he's a wizard?" It was as though the story was just there for me to discover and I thought: "Well his parents are dead and he needs to find out they're wizards" and on we went from there.

Stephen Fry:
And the names. I must mention them. You mentioned Mundungus being about tobacco. I don't how many of the boys and girls are aware but a lot of the names have very particular meanings. "Albus Dumbledore," is on the side of light and his name means white.

JK Rowling:
…And wisdom as well.

Stephen Fry:
And "Albion," is an old name for "Britain."

JK Rowling:
That's right.

Stephen Fry:
And Malfoy. What does that mean?

JK Rowling:
Well Malfoy is a made up name. But you could say it was old French for "bad faith."

Stephen Fry:
One more thing, which I'm sure the boys and girls have noticed. There's a school motto for Hogwarts, which is in Latin… and what is it?

JK Rowling:
Well you're one of the few people who knew what it meant when I met them. It means "Never tickle a sleeping Dragon."

Stephen Fry:
It's the magic equivalent of "Let sleeping dogs lie."

JK Rowling:
Exactly.

Stephen Fry:
And now we have a question from Neil, who is probably our farthest away in Sydney, Australia where it's Mid-Winter.

NEIL:
Have you ever considered writing a book about Harry five or ten years after he has left Hogwarts?

JK Rowling:
I get asked the question about whether I am going to write a book about Harry when he's all grown up quite a lot and I always say you have to wait and see whether he survives to be a grown up.

Stephen Fry:
That's a frightening thought, isn't it?

JK Rowling:
Sorry I'm not saying he won't, but I don't want to give anything away at this point.

Stephen Fry:
I was wondering. What do you think Harry would find more difficult to do: To fight Voldemort or to kiss Cho?

JK Rowling:
People who have read Order of the Phoenix will have a fairly shrewd idea what the answer might be.

Stephen Fry:
We're not going to give too much away about that new book (famous last words -Matt) because not everybody can read that fast. (break) Another thing I noticed about the ageing. If you look back at the first book, The Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets is that they almost seem innocent by comparison. Everything now is more complicated.

JK Rowling:
When he (Harry) first entered the world (of Magic) he had of course expected it to (after spending time with the Dursley's) be this magical wonderland and almost immediately he wandered into Draco Malfoy in the robe shop and found out that Wizards are racist and slowly but surely he's found out that many people in power in the Wizarding World are just as corrupt and nasty as they are in our world.

Stephen Fry:
People often say in the real world: "I haven't got a magic wand to cure all the worlds ills," but what you show is that people with a magic wand still can't cure all the ills.

JK Rowling:
No, that's because it's about human nature and all the people with less pure motives have magic wands too, so you spend a lot of time trying to legislate for them.

Stephen Fry:
So now we're going to go to an interesting question from Daniel Joseph from Croydon in England

DANIEL JOSEPH:
My question is: How do you decide what the baddies would be like?

JK Rowling:
This is going to sound awful but… I've met enough bad people in my life to have a fairly shrewd idea of what I want baddies to be like. I think from all of the letters I get from people your age (points to audience) I think all of you know a Draco Malfoy and I think the girls will almost all know a Pansy Parkinson. We all grow up with those sorts of people and certainly as adults we've all met Lucius Malfoy and some of the other characters.

Stephen Fry:
Mafloy, Goyle & Crabbe are almost irredeemably bad. There's almost nothing about Goyle and Crabbe who really are repulsive. Malfoy I suppose is very stylish in his nastiness.

JK Rowling:
He's very stylish in the film.

Stephen Fry:
And in the books as well I think?

JK Rowling:
Yes, he does have a certain flare.

Stephen Fry (heavily paraphrased):
Then there's characters like Snape, who are bad but there is a certain ambiguity about him. You can't quite decide because there's something quite sad about him. Something very lonely. We're slowly (after five books) getting the idea that maybe he is not so bad after all.

JK Rowling:
Yes, but you shouldn't think he's too nice. Let me just say that. It is worth keeping an eye on old Severus Snape, definitely.

Stephen Fry:
One of the most awful things in the world we feel, especially when we're young is injustice, when something is unfair it makes us so angry and one of the things, which always makes me upset on Harry's behalf is how people tell lies about him and Dumbledore knows this. He knows the fathers are Death Eaters.

JK Rowling:
I don't want to give too much away, but Dumbledore is a very wise man who firstly knows Harry is going to have to learn a few hard lessons to prepare him for what maybe coming in his life, so he allows Harry to do a lot of things he wouldn't normally allow another pupil to do and he also unwillingly permits Harry to confront a lot of things he'd rather protect him from but as people who have finished Order of the Phoenix will know, Dumbledore has had to step back a little bit from Harry in an effort to teach him some of life's harder lessons.

Stephen Fry:
Now let's cross over to Hong Kong, China where we have a question from the Korea International School

SCHOOL CHILDREN (all at once):
Do you believe in magic?

JK Rowling:
I'm sorry to say this, because often when I answer this question I get a groan but I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in it as it appears in the books. I could be slightly corny and say I believe in other kinds of magic. The magic of the imagination for example and love, but magic as in waving a magic wand and making things happen… no I don't. I'd love to be able to, but I'm afraid I can't.

Stephen Fry:
This may sound corny as well, but it's desperately important. The way Harry solves all his problems are really through his courage, his friendship, his loyalty and his stoutness of heart.

JK Rowling:
Harry is not a good enough wizard, yet to even attempt to take on Voldemort as Wizard to Wizard. However he has now escaped him three times, four if count the encounter with Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets and he keeps doing it because there is one thing that Voldemort doesn't understand and it is the power that keeps Harry going and we all know what that power is. (Duracell longer life batteries? -Matt)

Stephen Fry:
Exactly right. Now Natasha Wry from Suffolk in England has another question.

NATASHA WRY:
If you could have any magical power for one day, what would you have and how would you use it?

JK Rowling:
If I had any power, I would have the power of invisibility and this is a little bit sad but I would probably sneak off to a café and write all day.

I was just asked on my way in, when will book six be ready, so I think I you will agree that I need to get working soon.

Stephen Fry:
We're going to go straight now to Paris, in France to Antoine.

ANTOINE:
If you looked into the Mirror of Erised what would you see?

JK Rowling:
I would see myself very much as I am. One of the most wonderful things that could happen to me has happened and that's to have another child so I would see myself and my family but there would be room in the background for a lot of other things. I always say I would see what Harry sees, which is my mother alive again and a scientist over my shoulders inventing a cigarette that would be healthy and I can think of a particular journalist I'd like to see being boiled in oil over my other shoulder.

Stephen Fry:
If your first book had been a reasonable success for you to write a second one and that had been okay for you to write a third and fourth, so a few people would have heard your name, so they'd just done well enough. Do you think that the story would have developed in different ways? So is the huge fame and un-paralleled success given you a different view of the story.

JK Rowling:
I think I had planned Harry would always feel this pressure of his position. Did you notice the part in the first book where he enters the Leaky Cauldron for the first time and everyone runs at him and he's stunned because he doesn't realise they've been talking about him for eleven years without his knowledge and I always planned he would meet someone from the Daily Prophet. I think it would be foolish to pretend I don't write Rita Skeeter with a little bit more enjoyment these days.

Stephen Fry:
You don't read what people write about you?

JK Rowling:
I try and avoid it as much as possible

Stephen Fry:
Now we have a question from Ahmet in Israel.

AHMET:
What music does Harry Potter listen to?

JK Rowling:
Well he has recently heard the wizarding super group, The Weird Sisters who came to the Yule Ball who have an odd assortment of instruments, bagpipes, the cello and the electric guitar of course. So I would have to say they are his favourite group.

Stephen Fry:
So there's no wizarding house music, rap or hip hop?

JK Rowling:
It would have got very complicated, so I'm sticking with the Weird Sisters and you can make of them what you will.

Stephen Fry:
What's your musical taste? Lots of different things?

JK Rowling:
Lots and lots of different things. The Beatles were my favourite group and I just said to someone when I got on that this is the nearest I'll ever get to being a Beatle hearing you all [the audience] shouting. It was very nice. I see myself as the George Harrison.

Stephen Fry:
We have another question now from a place you know very well indeed, Edinburgh in Scotland and it's from a Janine Kerr.

JANINE KERR:
If you were a teacher at Hogwarts, what subject would you teach?

JK Rowling:
I think that I would probably teach charms and I see charms as a slightly lighter subject than Transfiguration. It's harder work. Charms has a little bit of leeway for more personal creativity. Transfiguration you have to get exactly right, so it's much more of a scientific subject. My daughter would be better at it as she's much more of a scientist.

Stephen Fry:
What did you teach when you were a teacher?

JK Rowling:
I taught French. I rarely speak it. I don't have a lot of time to read and speak in French these days because I'm a mother, your free time is normally spent doing the most important thing and that is writing and reading a bit in English.

Stephen Fry:
Where were you at school?

JK Rowling:
I was at school in the Forest of Dean. That's why Hagrid has that accent of course, which is a Forest of Dean accent.

Stephen Fry:
Now we have a question coming from Natasha Morison. Now Natasha is a competion winner and she's in the audience today and here's your question.

NATASHA MORISON:
How did you think of Quidditch, because it's so unlike any other sport I know.

JK Rowling:
Well if you want to create a game like Quidditch, what you have to do is have an enormous argument with your then boyfriend. You walk out of the house, you sit down in a pub and you invent Quidditch. And I don't really know what the connection is between the row and Quidditch except that Quidditch is quite a violent game and maybe in my deepest, darkest soul I would quite like to see him hit by a bludger.

Stephen Fry:
Do you ever play the computer games?

JK Rowling:
No I don't. My daughter is very good, but I can't work Playstations. I'm not good at these things.

Stephen Fry:
I've got no further than throwing Gnomes over hedges.

Stephen Fry:
We have another question from another competition winner, who is called Jackson Long. Let's have a look at your question.

JACKSON LONG:
Professor Snape has always wanted to be Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. In book five he doesn't get the job. Why doesn't Professor Dumbledore let him be the DADA teacher?

JK Rowling:
That is an excellent question and the reason is… I have to be careful… not to say too much. However, when Professor Dumbledore took Professor Snape onto the staff and Professor Snape said he'd like to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts please and Professor Dumbledore felt that it might bring out the worst in Professor Snape, so Dumbledore said: "I think we'll let you teach potions and see how you get along there."

Stephen Fry:
Is a Parselmouth a real thing or did you make that up?

JK Rowling:
Parselmouth is an old word for someone who has a problem with their mouth like a hair lip

Stephen Fry:
Now Order of the Phoenix. It's 766 pages long. That is a big book by any standards and as I have to sit in front of a microphone and read it all for hours and hours I'm very cross with you [He was joking kids…] but on the other hand it's extraordinary good value as you planned seven books in the series and you could have written eight just with the words you've done in the first five. Did you know it was going to be this long?

JK Rowling:
No I didn't. I will say this. I had to put in some things because of what's to come in Books Six and Seven and I didn't want anyone to say to me: "What a cheat. You never gave us clues." Because if I didn't mention certain things in Order of the Phoenix, you could have said: "Well you sprang that on us." Whereas I want you to be able to guess if you've got your wits about you. There are a few surprises coming.

Stephen Fry (question paraphrased):
Does it upset you to have to write all these unfair judgements and betrayals that Harry has to endure?

JK Rowling:
I do. I will say that I think he has the hardest time in this book because although there are some scary things coming for Harry, in this book no one believes him and also he's a teenager, so to have those two burdens in life at once is quite horrible, but from now on at least everybody knows he's been telling the truth so whatever he has to face, he doesn't have to deal with everyone being so mistrustful of him.

Stephen Fry:
Are we ever going to meet Hermione's parents?

JK Rowling:
Well we've seen them very briefly, but they're dentists so they're not that interesting.

Stephen Fry:
One of the most horrible and brilliant inventions of the books is the idea of snobbery, the purebloods and mudbloods and mixed breeding, which is a reflection of some of the things such as racism and intolerance, things we have in our world. Is that deliberate or did it come to you in a flash?

JK Rowling:
It is deliberate. The first time Harry meets Draco, he [Draco] is very rude about Muggles. I was also playing with that [intolerance] when I created Professor Lupin, who has a condition, which is contagious of course and so people are very frightened of him and I really like Professor Lupin as a character because he's someone that also has a failing, because although he is a wonderful teacher (one I myself would have liked to have had as a teacher) and a wonderful man, he does like to be liked and that's where he slips up. He's been disliked so often that he's always so pleased to have friends, so he cuts them an awful lot of slack.

Stephen Fry:
Now we're not going to go into the business of who dies, because not everyone has read the book, but it did cause a bit of a stir when you admitted it caused you great distress. Do you feel a lot of these emotional things with a lot of the characters you write.

JK Rowling:
I do. I think what I was trying to do with the death in this book was show how very arbitrary and sudden death is. This is a death where you didn't have a big death bed scene. It happened almost accidentally and that is one of the very cruel things about death and they're now in a war situation where that really does happen, where one minute you're talking to your friend and the next minute he's gone. It's so shocking and so inexplicable… "Where did they go?" I found it upsetting to write, because I knew what it would mean to Harry.

Stephen Fry:
Yes, for all his [something], [CHARACTER] was so loveable really.

JK Rowling:
And we've just given it away [bursts into laughter]

Stephen Fry (Hereafter known as Homer - D'OH!):
I never said anything...Moving on...Luna Lovegood: where did she come from?

JK Rowling (trying not to laugh still):
I don't know where Luna came from, but again I think many people would have met a Luna who is slightly out of step, but I really like Luna. She's really fun to write and in many ways Luna is the anti-Hermione because Hermione is so logical and so inflexible whereas Luna is the one who is prepared to believe a thousand mad things before breakfast.

Stephen Fry:
Now to go to one of the more horrible characters, Umbridge.

JK Rowling:
She's horrible isn't she?

Stephen Fry:
[to the audience] Have you come across an Umbridge? Does she drive you mad.

JK Rowling:
I'm glad you hate her because I really loath Umbridge.

Stephen Fry (gets handed an e-mail):
This is from a Jessica Wells, originally from Australia, now living in London and this is her question: Harry saw his parents die, so why hasn't he been able to see the Thestrals before?

JK Rowling:
At the end of Goblet of Fire, we sent Harry home more depressed than he had ever been leaving Hogwarts. Now I knew that the Thestrals were coming and I can prove that because they are in the book that I produced for comic relief, "Fantastic Beasts and where to find them" These unlucky black winged horses. However if Harry had seen them then and we hadn't explained them then, I thought that would be rather a cheat on the reader in that Harry suddenly sees these monsters but we don't go anywhere with them, so to explain to myself I said that you had to have seen the death and allowed it to sink in a little bit before slowly these creatures became solid in front of you, so that's how I am going to sneak past that one.

Stephen Fry:
Can you explain in words of less than two syllables what Arithmancy is?

JK Rowling:
Well your guess is as good as mine Stephen… Well, really it's predicting the future using numbers, but I've also decided there's a bit of numerology in there as well.

Stephen Fry:
Now this seems to be all the time we have for questions, but shortly, Jo will be reading from the book.