An A-Z of HARRY POTTER
Everything You Always Wanted to Know
About The Boy Wizard and His Creator
Aubrey Malone
Table of Contents
This book is not part of the Harry Potter series. It has not been endorsed or authorised by Warner Bros or J K Rowling. It does not claim nor imply any rights to her characters or creations.
Abandonment
Many people imagine that J K Rowling was an overnight success because of her sudden explosion onto the literary scene. In some ways she was. Unlike most fledgling authors, she didn’t wallpaper her room with rejection slips. But she did abandon two novels before hitting the jackpot with Harry Potter. What’s the betting they won’t turn up on some publisher’s desk in the years to come? If so, she may well submit them under a pseudonym. Not using a pseudonym, she might feel, would give her an unfair advantage over the opposition.
Acronyms
Hermione coins one of these: ‘SPEW’, standing for ‘Society, for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare’. Ron does likewise with ‘SPUG’, which stands for ‘Society for the Protection of Ugly Goblins’. A less graphic one is ‘OWL’, shorthand for ‘Ordinary Wizarding Level’, and there’s also ‘NEWTS’ for ‘Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests’.
Advance sales
In July 2000, the internet site Amazon had clocked up advance sales of The Goblet of Fire to the tune of 290 000 copies. Two years later the VHS and DVD versions of The Philosopher’s Stone were at the top of both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites as best-sellers three months before copies were actually available.
Age
Rowling turned 42 on 31 July 2007. She shares her birthday with—guess who—one Harry Potter.
Age line
This is the golden line Dumbledore drew around the Goblet of Fire to keep people under 17 years of age away from it. Fred and George Weasley took an Ageing Potion to try to circumvent it but they were still thrown back.
Alohamora
The spell Hermione uses to open the door in The Philosopher’s Stone so she and her friends can escape without being caught out of bounds by Argus Filch.
Alternative career
Rowling was a teacher before she became a full-time writer. On her last day in the classroom she informed her class she was leaving the job. One bright spark piped up, ‘Are you going to become a stripper, Miss?’ Instead of telling him off she thanked him for the compliment.
Amnesty International
Rowling worked in this human rights organisation for a time, but left when she found that she was doing too much paperwork and not enough campaigning for causes. She worked secretly at her writing during lunch-breaks, which made her something of an oddity in the eyes of her colleagues. Was she having an affair, they wondered? In a sense she was—with her muse.
Anapneo
This term is Greek for ‘breathe’ and is said to the victim of a spell to reduce the ill effects of a blocked airway.
