"...because she did something very, very hard, and she did it very, very well, thus pleasing hundreds of millions of children and adults very, very much. In an era of videogame consoles, online multiplayer ''environments,'' and tinier-is-better mobisodes, minisodes, and webisodes, she got people to tote around her big, fat old-fashioned printed-on-paper books as if they were the hottest new entertainment devices on the planet."

"Even when the incantations are flying (not to mention the people), she stays focused on the humanness of what she's writing about: the cost of pride and stubbornness and vanity, the toll of living in fear, the ache of loss, the search for home, the pain of holding a lifelong secret, the need to be loved, the quest to find out who you truly are."

I decided that the core of the Elder Wand is the tail hair of a Thestral; a powerful and tricky substance that can be mastered only by a witch or wizard capable of facing death.

Having taken Harry’s blood into himself, Voldemort is keeping alive Lily’s protective power over Harry. So Voldemort himself acts almost like a Horcrux for Harry – except that the power of Lily’s sacrifice is a positive force that not only continues to tether Harry to life, but gives Voldemort himself one last chance (Dumbledore refers to this last hope in chapter 35). Voldemort has unwittingly put a few drops of goodness back inside himself; if he had repented, he could have been healed more deeply than anyone would have supposed. But, of course, he refused to feel remorse.

Voldemort is also using the Elder Wand - the wand that is really Harry’s. It does not work properly against its true owner; no curse Voldemort casts on Harry functions properly; neither the Cruciatus curse nor the Killing Curse. The Avada Kedavra curse, however, is so powerful that it does hurt Harry, and also succeeds in killing the part of him that is not truly him, in other words, the fragment of Voldemort’s own soul still clinging to his. The curse also disables Harry severely enough that he could have succumbed to death if he had chosen that path (again, Dumbledore says he has a choice whether or not to wake up). But Harry does decide to struggle back to consciousness, capitalises on Lily’s ‘escape route’, and pulls himself back to the realm of the living.

It is the last piece of soul Voldemort possesses. When Voldemort attacks Harry, they both fall temporarily unconscious, and both their souls - Harry's undamaged and healthy, Voldemort’s stunted and maimed - appear in the limbo where Harry meets Dumbledore.

I know that after Dudley’s brave attempt at reconciliation at the start of Deathly Hallows, the two cousins would have remained on ‘Christmas Card’ terms for the rest of their lives, and that Harry would have taken his family to visit Dudley’s when they were in the neighbourhood (occasions dreaded by James, Albus and Lily).

Where did the last four months go? It feels as though Hallows was published, and then I slipped through some strange time portal in which everything went at double-quick time, only to be spat out in early December.

People keep saying to me, ‘I expect things have calmed down now you’ve finished?’ to which my answer some days is a fairly humourless laugh. I have been exceptionally busy since July, what with the US/Canadian tour, Beedle the Bard, assorted charitable commitments, a massive post-publication mountain of correspondence, plus those three children I insisted on bringing into the world. Consequence: neglect of website!

As for mourning Harry – and I doubt I will be believed when I say this – nobody can have felt the end as deeply as I did. The writing of Harry Potter has been inextricably linked with my life for seventeen years, and saying goodbye has been just as tough as I always knew it would be. So I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has written to me since publication, saying such wonderful things about what the books meant to them, because your words meant the world to me at this very bittersweet time.

The mother of three admits her mother’s painful death influenced her writing. “It has seeped into every part of the books,” she said. “She would have odd losses of feelings in limbs, her balance was poor for a long time and then it got worse and worse and she decided it was time to visit the doctor.

“She had a very virulent form of the illness and at that time there were no drug treatments at all.”

The hit author opened her heart by admitting she regrets not seeing her mother’s body before her funeral.

“I wanted to see her but my father didn’t want me to see her and I mistakenly agreed not to,” she said. “I deeply regret that. I really wish I’d seen her. It didn’t matter what she looked like. It would have made things easier.”

“I’d had a short and quite catastrophic marriage. I had to get my baby back to Britain and re-build us a life and adrenaline kept me going.

“It was only when I came to rest it hit me what a complete mess I had made of my life. That hit me quite hard.

“We were as skint as you can be without being homeless and at that point I was definitely clinically depressed.

“That was characterised by a numbness, a coldness and an inability to believe you will feel happy again. All the colour drained out of life.”

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is due to receive an award for outstanding achievement. All fine and dandy. But who has been asked to honour Miss Rowling?

Step forward Madonna. The hyperactive warbler is a Potter fan, as is her 11-year-old daughter Lourdes. So both have been asked to come on stage and present the award to Miss Rowling.

About the relationship between September-11 and Harry Potter, Rowling denied any influence and recognizes who was the true inspiration for the Minister Cornelius Fudge: "My model of the world after Voldemort's return was, directly, the government of Neville Chamberlain in Great Britain during the Second World War, when he tried to minimize the menace of the Nazi regime for political convenience."

She also spoke about her two marriages: "I had decided not to marry again. In seven years I didn't meet anyone who I wanted to be with. And I remember that I thought: I have a daughter who I adore, I have success, and in the deep, I am happy. My sister introduced us and I thought he was a very solid person. He's an excellent doctor in his profession, and he works in a world that is far away from mine. What I most adore about him is that Neil knows more people that want to know if he can help them, without having to ask who he is married to."

She didn't avoid talking about her first husband, Jorge Arantes, who was married to her near two years: "None of the characters of my books is my ex. Whatever happened in and out of marriage, the truth is that my ex-husband has contributed in a fifty percent to one of the most beautiful things that has happened in my life, which is my eldest daughter. So, I'd never have mortified him in a fairy tale. He's her father."

Today, Ms Rowling said: "Should the current services at the Sick Kids be transferred across to Glasgow the consequences for seriously ill children and their families would be massive.

"These children have enough to deal with without being separated from their families or having to endure long journeys west."

Professor Christine Geraghty of Glasgow University's theatre, film and television studies department said [...] "...Ms Rowling, was a phenomena and should be looked at as an individual, rather than demonstrative of a wider trend."

7 JK ROWLING

AUTHOR

Joanne Rowling's real power is that she made a generation denounced as TV addicts and computer obsessives turn to books. On the back of this, she has developed formidable commercial powers, with her very name prompting financiers and donors to put their hands in their pockets. Forbes has named her the world's second-richest female entertainer and the 48th most powerful celebrity of 2007. She was runner-up in Time's 2007 Person of the Year.

The creator of Harry Potter is a notable philanthropist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and One Parent Families. She can raise huge sums, as when her Tales of Beedle The Bard fetched £1.95 million at auction last year. She went to a state school in Monmouthshire, then Exeter University, and lived in Paris, Portugal and London before making Edinburgh her home.

"Everything we do in life is an attempt to deny death," she said on commenting on the theme of death in her novels.

"I feel very drawn to religion, but at the same time I feel a lot of uncertainty. I live in a state of spiritual flux. I believe in the permanence of the soul," Rowling said in her only interview with a Spanish newspaper to date.

"I find it a pity that Clinton and Obama have to be rivals because both of them are extraordinary," Rowling said.

And Professor Dumbledore says, in book 7, after the chapter where Harry faces the death: "Don't pity the dead Harry, but pity the living. And, above all, those who live without love." Someone who says this had to live both experiences: life, death, and lack of love.

JKR: Yes, it deals with the idea that if you treat a person brutally, that person is going to become brutal. That is something that you don't learn. We keep mistreating people, with the hope that they learn. But the only they learn is to be brutal, and the cycle repeats again. How can we stop this process? If I give you the answer, I'd be a politician and not a writer. But that process must stop. Because all we do is convert the people in assassins.

What makes you happy?

JKR: Family and work, obviously. I consider myself so lucky to have a family. When I had my daughter I already felt lucky. Although I divorced, I thought: at least I have a daughter. Many women can't have children. And I am lucky enough to find another great man and have two more kids. My children are, above all, the most important. Although it's difficult to compare writing with being a mom.

Do you still write at hand?

JKR: Yes. The pen is my magic wand and it has atrophied my finger after using it so much.

“To be invisible… that would be the best…”

J. K. Rowling (Bristol, England, 1965) or “Jo” to her friends, has the same look: frightened and happy, as Harry Potter, her fictional character. She wrote the first book because she needed it, and she continued writing until the seventh which is now released (on the 21st of February in Spain; as everywhere, in Salamandra), without looking the other way, without realizing the gigantic number of, children, youths, adults, who have become addicts from this enormous book of magic and reality which is perhaps the biggest seller in history.

Harry Potter is her hero: he saved her and as a consequence has left her emotional: she has abandoned him but cannot live without him. She told us this last Tuesday morning in Edinburgh, where she has lived for years, in the only interview she has given to Spanish media.

We brought her cheese from Asturias, to remind her of her prize from the “Príncipe de Asturias de la Concordia” and greetings from the foundation that decides those awards.

Occasionally she has spoken, in her interviews, of another great solitary person like herself, of Francis Scott Fitzgerald. It stroke us as an opportunity to start to talk to her in the same vein, of solitude and death, and of melancholy, which are the themes which dominate the last part of Harry Potter, perhaps her alter ego.

Q: You usually talk of Scott Fitzgerald, a melancholy man.

A: Yes, I have spoken of him to make a distinction between a writer that due to nature and talent had the impulse to write and could not share this need to write with his social life. I mentioned him because these days with so much emphasis on the media, it seems as though there is some sort of obligation, which says that a writer must be a public person. In my case, people think that because I am a well-known author, I should be good giving interviews and appearing in photographs. People expect to see you enjoying yourself on television programmes and expect that you like to be a public person, a performer. But I’m not. I like the life of the writer. I enjoy the solitude.

Q: It’s interesting, sometimes in Harry Potter, above all the most recent installments, there has been a certain amount of sadness and solitude, which is reminiscent of Fitzgerald.

A: Undoubtedly. It’s sadness, which is born from grief. And Scott Fitzgerald had two afflictions: that of his talent and his need to create and the affliction of his private life, which was catastrophic. Those two afflictions are enough to lead anyone to alcoholism.

Q: Those afflictions can come in that time between childhood and adolescence, when the phantoms arrive and they stay with you forever.

A: Yes, I think adolescents are very aware of death. They feel as though they are so pressured that, for them, death is only a step away. They are very fragile people. In Great Britain there is a culture of fear towards teenagers, towards young people in general. And it shouldn’t be that way. We need to be protecting them instead of protecting ourselves from them.

Q: Talk a bit about death. In the sixth and seventh Harry Potter books, death appears no just as a word or thought but as a possibility, something obvious and a reality.

A: That was always the plan, that death should appear in that way. Since he was young until Chapter 34 of the seventh book, Harry is required to be a better man in that he is obligated to accept the inevitability of his own death. The plan of the books was that he should have contact with death and with the experience of death. And it was always Harry alone who had to have that experience. It all came down to conscience, because the hero had to live these things, do things, see things on his count. It’s part of that isolation and sadness that comes with being a hero.

Q: That 34th chapter [quotation – re: Harry realizing he won’t survive] sounds like the beginning of 100 Years of Solitude by García Márquez.

A: That’s very flattering.

Q: It’s a book about death and obviously solitude, like yours… the character of 100 Years of Solitude accompanies his grandfather to see the ice and you take Harry to visit death.

A: For me, that chapter is the key of all the books. Everything, everything I have written, was thought of for that precise moment when Harry goes into the forest. That is the chapter that I had planned for 17 years. That moment is the heart of all of the books. And for me it is the last truth of the story. Even though Harry survives, of that there was no doubt, he reaches that unique and very rare state which is to accept his own death. How many people have the possibility of accepting their death before they die?

Q: It’s an experience close to everyone. When one has seen death in someone close to them, one asks themselves how that look that we will no longer see will be, what will happen next.

A: Definitely. It strikes me as extraordinary that regardless of the fact that we all know we are going to die, death remains a mystery. We feel as though death is like something secret which happens to very few people. And all of a sudden, someone close to you dies and the bomb drops. Harry has a premature understanding of death, long before Chapter 34. And that has an evident parallel with my life. If someone close to you in your life dies, as my mother did, the fact that death reaches us all returns to you more explicitly. And that is something that you should live with always.

Q: We live in dark and sad times; you say it in your books, especially in this one. How do you live in these times?

A: I have to believe in the kindness of the people. I think people are in nature, good. But actually, I continue watching American politics very closely. I am obsessed with the US elections. Because it will have profound effects on the rest of the world. The political situation in the US in recent years has badly affected your country as mine.

Q: And if you had a magic wand, what would you do?

A: I want a Democrat in the White House. And it seems a shame to me that Clinton and Obama are rivals because they are both extraordinary people.

Q: This morning, upon entering the hotel I saw that you carried The Times in one hand and on the front there was a photo of Hillary crying.

A: Well, it was one small tear. And she is allowed a tear on occasion. A life in politics is very hard on a woman. If you don’t cry, you’re a *****. And if you do cry, you’re weak. It’s difficult. On the other hand, it’s acceptable for a man to cry.

Q: Solitude, death. We speak of dark things. At its best, literature comes from that.

A: Well, I think it was Tolkien who said that all the important books are about death. And there’s some truth in that because death is our destiny and we should face up to it. All that we have done in life had the intention of avoiding death.

Q: You said that you saw your soul as something undeniable.

A: Yes, that’s true. But I also have said that I have many doubts regarding religion. I feel very attracted by religion, but at the same time I feel a lot of uncertainty. I live in a state of spiritual flux. I believe in a permanent soul. And that is reflected in the last book.

Q: What makes you happy?

A: Family and work, obviously. I consider myself so lucky to have a family… my children are, above all other things, the most important. Even though it’s difficult to make being a mother compatible with writing.

Q: Before coming to see you, I asked the Spanish scriptwriter, Rafael Azcona, for a question to ask you, and he responded that I should ask his niece Sara, six years old, who is a Harry Potter addict.

A: That’s fantastic.

Q: But you say that you should read your books from the age of seven years or older.

A: Well, my eldest daughter was six when she started to read them. I have always known where I was going to go with the books. So yes, I think that a six-year-old child can understand the first book [Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone] even though the last one is quite dark. The fifth book is the darkest of all because there is an absence of anticipation and an oppressive atmosphere. I think because of that, people didn’t like it as much. Even though there are readers who prefer this book to the others, they are a strange minority. The fifth, the sixth and this last one I don’t think are suitable for a child of six years.

Q: And when you wrote the first one, did you think of a designated reader?

A: That’s the problem. I called it a children’s story because the main character was a child. But it was always a child who I wanted to be older. And at the end he’s a man, a young man but a man. That is something unusual in children’s books: that the protagonist grows. And it makes me enormously happy that people continue reading and enjoying the books. They grew older with Harry Potter. But I never thought adults were potential readers.

Q: Peter Mayer, the editor, who was the first I heard talk of Harry Potter in Spain, said that the key of this success is that the series has become reading material for adults.

A: Yes, it’s incredible. Only now am I capable of looking back and realizing everything. For 10 years I didn’t allow myself to think about it. I think I did it to protect myself. It’s very difficult to live with that pressure, but I lived constantly denying the facts. After each publication I made a point to not read any reviews.

Q: Literature saves people, or helps to save them. How did writing affect you?

A: Let me tell you one thing. Simply the fact of writing the first book saved my life. I’m always told that the world I created is unreal; it was that which allowed me to escape. Yes, it’s true; it’s unreal up to a point. But not because my world was magical but because all writers evade themselves. Additionally, I did not write only to escape but because I searched to understand ideas which concerned me. Ideas such as love, loss, separation, death… and all that is reflected in the first book.

Q: What else did that first book give you?

A: A place in a prosaic level, writing that book gave me the discipline, the focus and the ambition, which back then was reduced to simply seeing the book published.

Q: How was the day of publication?

A: I saw my dream become reality. It was an extraordinary moment. I couldn’t believe it, I was entranced. And in some way almost immediately I felt as though a train was pushing me from behind at full speed, as in a cartoon. I thought: “What’s happened to me?” Three months later I received an incredible advance, according to my standards back then. In that time, I was renting a flat, I didn't have security or savings. I wore second-hand clothes. Then, money was scarce and to have that money all of a sudden was extraordinary. That night I couldn’t sleep. The next day, journalists started to appear, they gave me an important prize, The Sun called me to buy the rights for the story of my life and the journalists began to patrol in front of my house. And let me tell you something: it scared me a lot.

Q: Is that why you’re scared of journalists even now?

A: No, I’m not scared of them. I remember a pair of journalists in particular who noticed my incredulity and vulnerability and helped me. One of them told me that I had every right to keep my daughter away from the press because I refused to take her with me to interviews and have them take photos of her. I’m talking of the press of this country, of the United Kingdom. That’s how it works.

Q: Your books appear to be full of personal details.

A: I tend to use significant dates. When I need a date or a number, I use something related to my personal life. I don’t know why I do it, it’s a tic. Harry’s birthday is the same date as mine, for example. The numbers that appear or dates that are in the books are related to my life.

Q: Writing your first book entranced you. And the pressure of the success, knowing that millions of people waited for your work?

A: I made a serious decision not to think about it. Obviously there were moments when some news items filtered through, above all during books four and five. There you can notice the pressure and I think that’s evident in the writing.

Q: How did that happen?

A: When I arrived at the fourth book I was very burnt out. I had produced a book a year for four years at the same time as raising my only child without a nanny or help of any kind. I was exhausted. And in reality I thought: “I can’t do it anymore, I have to stop”. I told this to my editor, that if I continued like this I wouldn’t be able to continue writing. And so I met the man who is now my second husband.

Q: You are Harry Potter. And you say it yourself: “Harry is mine”. Have you always known how you were going to finish? Did you always know there were going to be seven books?

A: I always knew what was going to happen. From the start I had the whole plot outlined, without the detail but I always knew that the story was going to finish. And it has finished, even though many fans are disgusted, there isn’t a way of reviving Harry’s story. His story has finished. But finishing it was very hard. It was devastating.

Q: The ending is moving: “The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years.”

A: It’s symbolic. We all repeat the lie again and again: that time cures everything. And it’s not true. There are things that aren’t cured, such as when someone you love dies.

Q: You also wrote: “Harry Potter, the Boy who lived”. The teacher says it and you say that he lived because he had faith in his convictions, thanks to that he conquered Voldemort. Are you like that?

A: I would like to say yes because I believe in a hero with heroic attributes. I read on a site: “A hero is not braver than everyone else. He is only brave for five minutes longer…” Harry is like that.

Q: In all the books there is the moral that one can save themselves if they have friends, but Harry’s story is also one of solitude.

A: I agree entirely. I have given Harry my fault, which is a tendency to shut myself in, to isolate myself when I am under pressure, sad or happy. I tend to isolate myself. But I know it’s not good, that it’s not healthy. And I gave that to Harry. Even though that is what also makes him heroic, it is what prepares him to act on his own.

Q: Is Harry your hero?

A: Yes, well, in real life, my hero is Robert F. Kennedy. I created a boy who tries to act with morality, whom even though he is attacked and hurt physically and emotionally nevertheless continues to be attracted by the good side of things. And he is genuine and loyal and I find heroism in all these things.

Q: People are aware of the figures of your life, of how wealthy you are, but less so that you are human; it is as though they see you with a magic wand like Harry Potter.

A: Sadly, it is like that. When I see my name in lists of powerful people, something I don’t do much, I think about it. Power isn’t something I want and additionally, I don’t have it. Yes, I am rich.

Q: Imagine that for a moment you had the ability to make yourself invisible.

A: To be invisible? That would be the best…

(On F. Scott Fitzgerald):

Q: He drank to find himself, to be alone?

A: Yes, but his chosen partner says a lot. The people we are attracted to say plenty about who we are. He couldn’t have a peaceful life with his wife Zelda. He chose to be with someone who sometimes made it impossible to write. He didn’t have that peace so necessary when it comes to create something.

[On the Time Magazine photo of Senator Clinton:]

Q: Crying can be a way of laughing?

A: Could be, and in this case, after reading the article, that tear was indeed a happy tear.

Q: Our souls floating around, looking for what?

A: That’s the big question, but I hope we don’t have to come back! I don’t want to come back!

[After stating she doesn't read reviews:]

Q: And could you really do that?

A: Yes, is very good not to be aware of the reviewers or what they’re saying about you. I wrote what I wanted. When I finished the seventh book I though it was the best I’d written. It was the book I wanted to write. I was more satisfied with that book that any other. If I’d read any review what good would it have made? It was written, there was nothing else I could do, but now I can allow myself to look back and what happens is what you just said: adults started to read the books to their children and then they continued to read on their own. There’s nothing more gratifying than to listen to people saying that entire families read the books together. I’ve heard that a lot. They read one chapter together and then they gathered again to read the next one. Is unbelievable isn’t? A lot of families told me they did that and is gratifying in so many levels. The books have become a social act.

Q: Have you done that with Jessica? Are you going to do it with the rest of your children?

A: Jessica is fourteen and she is a fervent admirer of Harry.

Q: What did she tell you after she read the books?

A: She asked me why I did this thing or another, and I my answer was that that’s the way it had to be. Yes, sometimes you can give an automatic answer, like some things were made up as literary mechanisms, elements that helped the plot. In other cases, is harder to explain the process of writing. I wrote it because it came up that way. Sometimes I wrote as if something or somebody was saying it to me.

Q: Could you describe what that something was?

A: There are so many answers to that question. I could say: “It was me, it was my subconscious.” Yes, it was my subconscious, so what I’ve written comes from everything that I’ve done and all the people I’ve known because everything and everyone are somewhere in my head. Or I could say it was the muse, and I like to think it was the muse, because that means the writer is not aware of the origin of what they’re writing, or at least is not fully aware of it, and I know it’s a clichéd word about the Harry Potter books, but they’re magical.

Q: That means that you went through the same thing that happened to Juan Rulfo when he wrote “Pedro Páramo” because he couldn’t find it in his bookshelf.

A: I love that story and it’s true, in my case it’s exactly like that, although I didn’t write what I wanted, but what I needed to write at that moment.

[On celebrity and life in the public eye:]

Q: People often notice the figures in your life, how wealthy you are but few times they say that you are also a human; it’s like they see you with a magic wand, like Harry Potter.

A: Yes, unfortunately they do. The thing about power is interesting because really what kind of power do I have? When I see my name in lists of powerful people, something I don’t do often, I think about it. Power isn’t something I want and additionally, I don’t have it. Yes, I am rich. I’ve made a lot of Money, for which I’m grateful, but that’s the way it is. When people approach me and ask about the amount of money I have… the other day I was on the street and a woman came up to me and asked if I was J. K. Rowling, I said yes. She then said: “You deserve everything you have.” I don’t think she was talking about the money, and when someone says that to you it’s wonderful; but I think that the obsession with money is global, here in the UK we have lists, millions of lists, rich people over 40, under 40 for which I no longer qualify because I’m 42… wealth is an obsession I don’t know if it’s the same way in Spain.

Q: Are you happy?

A: Much more than I was before.

Q: What have you managed to get rid of?

A: I’m very relieved to be older and accepting who I am and knowing who I am. When I was twenty and during all that decade I had a very bad time, I think it happens to loads of people, they just don’t say it. I made a lot of mistakes; some of them were very bad. Now I feel much more confident.

Q: The fantasy in literature completes people.

A: Yes, that’s right. Humans need fantasy and magic. We have a need for mystery. Sir Frank Frasier (in The Golden Bow) says that in religion the man depends on God, but in magic the man depends on himself, which allows us to measure the capacity of man and magic becomes an ideal existence. Magic carries a human existence, in Book 6 the Prime Minister says to the Minister of Magic “You can do magic! Surely you can sort out anything!” and the minister answers: “Yes, the trouble is, the other side can do magic too.” We need magic and I defend it at all cause. Magic is a very important part of literature and that’s why it’s always going to be there.

Q: There’s this dialogue between Harry and Professor Dumbledore: “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”

A: And Dumbledore says: “Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth would that mean that is not real?” That dialogue is the key; I’ve waited seventeen years to use those lines. Yes, that’s right. All this time I’ve worked to be able to write those two phrases; writing Harry entering the forest and Harry having that dialog.

Q: And sometimes, Harry is in the real world.

A: Of course. It’s important to have light and darkness, it’s a very conventional mechanism, but to be able to create a transition between a mundane universe and the cruel and oppressive existence adds shadows. As the story moves forward what I was hoping to reach was that what used to be going to the Dursleys became something comical. As Harry gets older and keeps gaining power and confidence he find himself better with the Dursleys, and the place of darkness and evil is exactly what used to be the world of light and magic. This family goes from being cruel to be funny and in book seven it even becomes pathetic when we found out that his Aunt was a jealous woman and even, form Harry’s point of view, a broken one.

Q: Your Spanish editor wanted me to ask you about the faith of the non-magical Dursley family.

A: Very well, I’ll have to write an eight book. (laughs) Really, I thought it wasn’t necessary to write about the Dursleys. I thought the reader would know that they had been protected and they were out of hiding. When fans ask me this I tell them that thanks to the final encounter between Harry and Dudley they can try to have a friendly relationship, that they send Christmas cards and visit each other every once in a while. It would be awkward but they’d try, because it’s all about staying in touch. They could never be good friends, put they’d try to have a friendship… Dudley knows that Harry saved his life. Well, he thinks he saved his life when actually he was saving his soul.

Q: There are more scars left in your life, in Harry’s life?

A: If you’re asking me if I’m going to write more books, if I have unfinished business, the answer is yes… But with Harry, I took him to work at the Ministry, I have to believe that there’s a possibility to get rid of corruption, and I see it in that battle, but he’s become a middle-age father worrying about if his kid is going to do well in school.

Q: In the real world. No magic wand?

A: No, always with a wand.

Q: Do you have that magic wand?

A: Isn’t that the muse?

Q: You still write with a pen?

A: Always.

Q: Maybe that’s the magic wand?

A: Yeah, maybe it is… and look: the magic wand has ruined my finger for using it so much.

Q: You said in the past you would have chosen the resurrection stone like Harry.

A: And I would’ve been wrong… I think that when something dies it belongs somewhere else, every person has a responsibility towards another. I have it with my children and if I were trying to rescue somebody from death it wouldn’t be good for them. My duty is to my children and their future. Resurrection is a huge temptation but it’s dangerous.

Q: Maybe writing is some kind of Resurrection Stone.

A: Yes, of course, but I think you realize that once you’re writing to make a dream come true. If it’s just like that then, for me, writing loses its worth. Describing your fantasy is not the same as creating a world.

Jo confirms that Snape and Dumbledore’s [histories] were established before The Philosopher's Stone was published, but states that she doesn’t think about the movie[s] when she writes (even though she had a thought for the producers after having written the battle of Hogwarts, realising how much it would cost!).

If Jo [were] to meet a character, she would definitely pick Dumbledore (even if she had been tempted by a hug with Hagrid).

As for the opposition of the Pope to Harry Potter, she confesses that she doesn’t follow the issue. Basically, she is definitely opposed to censorship and sees Harry Potter more as a moral book than a proselyte one.

And who was the character she would most like to meet?

"Dumbledore -- to apologise for outing him," she replied to applause.

She has sold 400 million books, and made avid readers of many kids who are not easily persuaded to read for fun. She also created a character and a world that generations to come will find compelling, entertaining and simply magical.

A Downing Street insider said: “This is an issue which Sarah and JK are passionate about.

“They’ve been grateful for the willingness of the Romanian government to engage in serious discussion about it.”

One restaurant worker said:

"It is only a small plaque and we didn't even know it had been stolen until someone pointed it out to us.

"We haven't contacted the police about it. It's probably a waste of time for them to even try and find out who stole it."

The city's culture leader, Deidre Brock, said: "I am hopeful that it is found and put back soon."

No, sorry, not even one of them, though they do seem to lead very exciting lives, these fake J K Rowlings. I like to imagine them partying with all my imaginary friends (‘a close friend confided…’) in some bright and shiny alternative universe. But meanwhile, on planet earth, the dull human J K Rowling hasn’t got, and has never had, a profile on MySpace, Bebo or any similar site.

"I will continue writing for children because that's what I enjoy," reveals Jo, who greatly misses the child wizard. "It's left me with the biggest emptiness in my life." She will, however, leave behind the magical world of Hogwarts. "I believe that it's good for me and good for my readers that I bring myself to work on something different," she declares.

"I am very good at finding a suitable cafe. I blend into the crowd and, of course, I don't sit in the middle of the bar staring all around me. In 90 per cent of cases, it's the cafe's staff who allow me to work without being bothered."

J.K. Rowling

U.K.

Net worth: $1 billion

Once a single mother living on welfare in a coldwater flat in Edinburgh, Scotland, Rowling is now the only billionaire author on our list. The seventh and last installment of her wildly successful Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released July 2007 to throngs of rabid fans who made it the fastest-selling book of all time. Over 11 million copies were sold in the first 24 hours. Feeding the Potter-mania: the film version of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, came out the same month. The popularity of her boy wizard has put the author herself in the spotlight: a Rowling documentary aired last year. In November a New York judge ordered publisher RDR Books to halt publication of a Potter dictionary after Rowling brought a lawsuit against the firm.

"I can cope with a bad review. No one loves a bad review but a useful review is one that teaches you something. But to be honest the Christian Fundamentalist thing was bad. I would have been quite happy to sit there and debate with one of the critics who were taking on Harry Potter from a moral perspective. In a sense we have traded arguments through the media. I've tried to be rational about it. There's a woman in North Carolina or Alabama who's been trying to get the books banned-she's a mother of four and never read them. And then- I'm not lying, I'm not even making fun, this is the truth of what she said-quite recently she was asked [why] and she said 'Well I prayed whether or not I should read them, and God told me no.' Rowling pauses to reflect on the weight of that statement, and her expression one of utter disbelief.

"You see, that is where I absolutely part company with people on that side of the fence, because that is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is, 'I will not open my mind to look on your side of the argument at all. I won't read it, I won't look at it, I'm too frightened.' That's what's dangerous about it, whether it be politically extreme, religiously extreme...In fact, fundamentalists across all the major religions, if you put them in a room, they'd have bags in common!" she laughs loudly before sobering. "They hate all the same things, it's such an ironic thing."

"I had always seen Dumbledore as gay, but in a sense that's not a big deal. The book wasn't about Dumbledore being gay. It was just that from the outset obviously I knew he had this big, hidden secret, and that he flirted with the idea of exactly what Voldemort goes on to do, he flirted with the idea of racial domination, that he was going to subjugate the Muggles. So that was Dumbledore's big secret.

Why did did he flirt with that?" she asks. "He's an innately good man, what would make him do that. I didnt even think it through that way, it just seemed to come to me, I thought 'I know why he did it, he fell in love.' And whether they physically consummated this infatuation or not is not the issue. The issue is love. It's not about sex. So that's what I knew about Dumbledore. And it's relevant only in so much as he fell in love and was made an utter fool of by love. He lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently became very mistrusting of his own judgment in those matters so became quite asexual. He led a celibate and bookish life."

Clearly some people didn't see it that way. How does she react to those who disagree with a homosexual character in a children's novel? "So what?" she retorts immediately "It is a very interesting question because I think homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act. There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary. There were people who thought, well why haven't we seen Dumbledore's angst about being gay?" Rowling is clearly amused by this and rightly so. "Where was that going to come in? And then the other thing was-and I had letters saying this-that, as a gay man, he would never be safe to teach in a school."

An air of incredulity descends on the room as if Rowling herself still can not believe this statement. She continues: "He's a very old single man. You have to ask: why is it so interesting? People have to examine their own attitudes. It's a shade of character. Is it the most important thing about him? No, it's Dumbledore for God's sake. There are 20 things that are relavant to the story before his sexuality." Bottom line then: he isn't a gay character; he's a character that just happens to be gay. Rowling concurs wholeheartedly.

“Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted,” said Rowling. “The thing that made me go for help . . . was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn’t right, this can’t be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state.”

Rowling said her usual GP was away, and the replacement doctor sent her away. “She said, ‘If you ever feel a bit low, come and speak to the practice nurse’ and dismissed me.”

Rowling added: “We’re talking suicidal thoughts here, we’re not talking ‘I’m a little bit miserable’.

Two weeks later I had a phone call from my regular GP who had looked back over the notes . . . She called me back in and I got counselling through her.

“She absolutely saved me because I don’t think I would have had the guts to go and do it twice.”

“I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never,” she said in an interview with Adeel Amini, 22, for a student magazine at Edinburgh University.

“What’s to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that.”

It says the book is “nothing more than a recast of Ms. Rowling’s original text,” which differentiates it from the Ty Beanie Baby book cited by RDR because that book contained “critical and evaluative” elements.

The main complaint says that RDR cannot prove that it is likely to succeed on a fair use charge because it does not create “new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings.” It also says that attempts to cast it as a “serious book” filled with “scholarly commentary and analysis is merely an attempt to excuse blatant infringement.” It says “alphabetizing” does not render a work transformative and that reorganizing work does not alone render a work in concert with fair use.

It says RDR’s expert also agrees, citing the filing that says that the book’s chief point is not literary analysis.

On the charge that RDR made that JKR/WB have selectively chosen material to support their claims, this complaint cites a court decision which says “no plagiarist can excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work he did not pirate.” It also says that despite Steve Vander Ark claiming he used reference works, none are cited in the book or mentioned in the bibliography, and some appear to be taken from sources “such as Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary without attribution.” It also says entries on Harry and Voldemort basically tell the entire plot of the Harry Potter series.

“...as I have excellent relations with many members of the fan community, I find it devastating to contemplate the possibility of such a severe alteration of author-fan relations. I continue to believe that the online fandom has been a wonderful experience for thousands of people, myself included; that it has become, not only an enormous global book club, but engendered an explosion of creativity and communication rooted in a world we would all like to inhabit.”

"I fully intend to write this encyclopedia, however..I am not prepared to commit to another deadline [and] do not believe I should be forced to make such a commitment or run the risk of losing the right to create my own encyclopedia on an exclusive basis. I thought that this was part of what my rights were as an author and copyright holder. I also feel strongly that RDR is attempting to interfere with my creative process by repeatedly arguing that a timeline for publication of my Harry Potter encyclopedia is necessary in order to prove that I mean to publish one at all. I am not a person to make statements lightly, particularly when it comes to statements that ultimately will set expectations for my fans.”

"I feel that I have a duty to these readers to ensure, as far as possible, that Harry Potter does not become associated with substandard versions, whether in the world of film or in any other medium. I believe that RDR’s book constitutes a Harry Potter ‘rip off’ of the type I have spent years trying to prevent and that both I, as the creator of this world, and fans of Harry Potter, would be exploited by its publication.”

"The Harry Potter books are full of moral choices and ethical dilemmas, and, ironically, Mr. Vander Ark’s actions tend to demonstrate that he is woefully unfit to represent himself as either a ‘fan of’ or ‘expert on’ books whose spirits he seems entirely to have missed.”

“I won’t publish…in any form except online. [Ms. Rowling is] entitled to that market, not me and not [another author.]"

40 percent of the material in the book was written by other members of the staff or guest contributors and volunteers, then quotes two LeakyLounge members (dresdenfiles.fan and cbm) who publicly stated that while they contributed to the Lexicon they had no knowledge that they were contributing to a for-profit book.

“I’m sorry but that’s where I draw the line. I will not stand for someone stealing my material and using it to scam fans out of money…I don’t like doing things like this. But this leech is not a true fan.”

A New York Federal District Court Judge on Monday ordered the case to go to trial on April 14. A lawyer for RDR Books said Rowling was expected to appear to give evidence in the case.

"We asked for her and they said they would provide her," said lawyer David Hammer. "I would say it would be very unlikely that she would not appear," he added. The witness list needs to be handed to the judge in the case by April 4.

"What I keep away from Hogwarts in the next generation is having to return to Quidditch, unless it decides that my hero on this occasion could not play Quidditch. In that case, could have adventures while others play Quidditch."

"I wanted to have a debate here, so that my three main characters (when they arrive in the room where they studied death in the Ministry of Magic). Hermione, the hyper-rational and skeptical one until the end, did not hear anything behind the veil and it frightens her; Ron gets tense: Ron is not someone who would face something deeper than a beer, to be able to avoid it; Harry has accepted it, and here he is slightly unwise, because Harry has no idea how dangerous the attraction of death can be for a teenager."